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Network Storm – Loop

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This scenario has recently happened twice. The first time was luck in resolving it and the second was a little more educated.

Our network recently went mad, busy and the traffic was chaos. This went on for over a day. After trying many things we found by accident that someone on the network had plugged both ends of a cable into a wall socket creating a loop. As soon as this was removed the traffic just stopped. Again this has happened and eventually we found the culprit. My question is, within a LAN of many hundred sockets is there an easy way to identify where the offence is, what is the best way to track this without going round checking every single connection manually?? If not specific can it be narrowed down to an area? If this as happened to you you will be able to understand my frustrations

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Clarifications

In reply to Network Storm – Loop

Clarifications

This might interest you…

In reply to Network Storm – Loop

http://www.anasil.net/
It is software that keeps an eye on the whole network. It gives you a network map layout (if you need it). It is a Windows platform.

A bit about Anasil:
ANASIL 2.2 is the network analyser of local networks and the protocols decoder. Prepares in-depth network analysis, captures and decodes network packets, checks if any sniffer is running in the LAN. Measures the network traffic, activity of computers and the transmission speed, makes analysis of frames, connections with WWW servers, point-to-point tests, creates lists and statistics of the network protocols, the Anasil Desktop Agent feature.

More software here:
http://www.sharewareconnection.com/titles/ethernet1.htm

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

If your network switches have Spanning Tree Protocol enabled

In reply to Network Storm – Loop

This cannot happen.

Also, apparently your switches automatically do ‘auto crossover’ or auto-uplink. You can disable this feature on many switches.

Without auto-crossover (also called auto-uplink), the only way to double connect would be with a proper crossover cable or another ethernet switch.

Finally, if users are allowed to use small ethernet switches for extra ports, make sure the switch has one manual ‘uplink’ button, and does not do auto-uplink on every port.

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