North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: ARP Table Timeout and Mac-Address-Table Timeout
I saw that one before. Thats what we based our current fix on. Frank Bulk wrote: > Steven: > > This was recently discussed on cisco-nsp: > http://marc.info/?l=cisco-nsp&m=121316151010190&w=2 > > Frank > > -----Original Message----- > From: Steven King [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2008 7:27 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: ARP Table Timeout and Mac-Address-Table Timeout > > I am a network engineer for a large web hosting company. We are having > an issue with our distribution routers flooding traffic in one of our VLANs. > > We have a customer with a routed mode ASA 5550. They have their own > private VLAN that is a /23 This VLAN is 145. The outside interface of > the firewall is in VLAN 132. We are routing all traffic for VLAN 145 to > the IP of the outside interface of the firewall in VLAN 132. > > VLAN 132 is Layer3 routable and VLAN 145 is only Layer2 switchable. > > We have two distribution switches which are redundant with HSRP. Dist1 > is the active forwarder in this case. Traffic coming into these two > routers are load balanced between Dist1 and Dist2 with EIGRP routes with > equal cost. > > We have found that traffic coming into Dist2 (the standby) is flooding > traffic destined for the firewall outside interface. But Dist1 is not. > > We have tracked down the cause of this to the MAC-Address-Table timing > out before the ARP table times out. We leave these values at the Cisco > default. ARP = 4hr MAC = 5 minutes. Since Dist2 is not receiving any > traffic from the firewall going out to the internet, it is not updating > the MAC-Address-Table after it expires. Instead, it waits 4 hours for > the ARP cache to expire for that IP, and then updates everything. But > Dist2 ends up flooding traffic for that 4 hours causing latency. > > We have done some research on this problem and have found so far the > best solution to be to make the ARP timeout less than the > MAC-Address-Table aging-timer.We have set the ARP = 1hr and MAC = 2hrs > in this case to correct the problem. So when the ARP entry times out > before the MAC entry, the forced update of the ARP entry before the MAC > timeout causes the MAC entry age to reset. Indeed this does correct the > problem. > > Is this the best solution to the problem, or is there another preferred > solution? Has anyone ran into this in their own Enterprise Networks? > > Please let me know if I didn't explain anything well enough. > > -- > Steve King > > Network Engineer - Liquid Web, Inc. > Cisco Certified Network Associate > CompTIA Linux+ Certified Professional > CompTIA Network+ Certified Professional > CompTIA A+ Certified Professional > > > > -- Steve King Network Engineer - Liquid Web, Inc. Cisco Certified Network Associate CompTIA Linux+ Certified Professional CompTIA Network+ Certified Professional CompTIA A+ Certified Professional
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