How to control broadcast storm for Zyxel Switch in standalone mode?

Zyxel_Melen
Zyxel_Melen Posts: 2,342  Zyxel Employee
Zyxel Certified Network Engineer Level 1 - Switch Zyxel Certified Network Administrator - Switch Zyxel Certified Network Administrator - Nebula Zyxel Certified Sales Associate
edited July 2022 in Network Reliability

Scenario

 

Sometimes you can find some PCs flooding packets that occupy the network bandwidth. Broadcast storms occur when too much of the network bandwidth is occupied by these packets.

In this situation, normal packets cannot transmit smoothly.

We can enable Broadcast storm control to reduce the amount of broadcast traffic coming into you network.

Broadcast storm control limits the number of broadcast frames that can be stored in the switch buffer or sent out from the switch.  Broadcast frames that arrive when the buffer is full are discarded.


 

Topology

 

This topic will introduce how to configure broadcast storm control and the result.

 

 

Configuration

 

Configure broadcast storm control

1.1 In this example, we use the limit rate as 50 pps. Go to “Menu > Advanced Application > Broadcast Storm Control” to enable broadcast storm control and configure broadcast limit rate in port 6.


 

Verification

 

Connect Client A to port 6 of the switch and send 1000 ARP packets per second.

Connect Client B to port 8 and run Wireshark to monitor the ARP packets from Client A by checking I/O graphs.

Switch should receive all broadcast packets from port 6 but only flood 50 broadcast packets to all ports including port 8.


Checking the Wireshark I/O graphs, we can see switch limit the packet to 50 pps.


 

Note

 

If your network surrounding is using backup system like Ghost, please do not enable broadcast storm control on this port, otherwise, the backup performance will be limited.