MAC table not populating correctly with multiple vlans
Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:24 pm
I've been chasing an issue for several weeks and narrowed the problem down to unicast flooding. The switch is forwarding traffic out to all CPEs on a VLAN because (from what I can tell) the MAC table is not populating correctly. Has anyone experienced this?
After switch software upgrades and replacements I finally had to pull the switch and replace it with a Cisco 2960-G to split my VLANs out.
Setup is layer 2 and pretty straight forward:
Trunk from our C.O. (central office) is feeding the tower (A) that had the issue. I'm also feeding a few other towers (B & C) on different VLANs.
I have about 130 customers (split between 6 RocketM2 and a few dozen on 6 Rocket-5AC) on tower A. All APs and CPEs are in bridge mode and on VLAN 18. Customers have their own routers and we use PPPoE.
All CPEs on tower A were receiving 1-3mbps and at times 5+ mbps; causing 100% airtime utilization on our APs. I would have a hard time logging into a CPE, sometimes taking minutes to load the WebUI.
I have a RoomAlert that monitors power running on port 21 on the same VLAN. Normally I see very little traffic (20kbps or less) on this unless we load the webUI to look at the status. As you can see below the switch is sending unicast traffic out of this port as well.
Originally the switch was running older firmware and I upgraded to the latest (1.4.9) to see if there was a bug. This did not help so we replaced the switch with a newer model. The new switch didn't fix the problem either.
-Upgraded firmware on WS-24-400A from 1.4.6 to 1.4.9. No fix
-Replaced with a WS-26-400-AC which had 1.4.7 pre-installed (did not upgrade to latest). No fix
I had no choice other than to install a different switch. The switch installed now is a Cisco 2960. Everything was moved to the 2960 except for the local PtMP APs (they remained on the Netonix). The Netonix is uplinked (port 24) to the 2960 and set as a trunk.
After this change the unicast flooding stopped. Below are several screenshots.
I also took screenshots of the MAC table. First screenshot is before the 2960 was installed and the second is after.
Notice, with all devices off of the Netonix other than the PtMP APs (on VLAN18) the MAC table is populated correctly.
I have some other Netonix switches that I'm also starting to noticing unicast flooding. I believe this issues has been going on for a while but slowly getting worse as this tower is more populated than others. And it's seems like after Christmas we seen this flooding escalate probably because of more traffic from users.
I have also attached a few more screenshots of different tabs in the Netonix to give a better understanding of the setup.
Thank you in advance for any help and/or suggestions.
After switch software upgrades and replacements I finally had to pull the switch and replace it with a Cisco 2960-G to split my VLANs out.
Setup is layer 2 and pretty straight forward:
Trunk from our C.O. (central office) is feeding the tower (A) that had the issue. I'm also feeding a few other towers (B & C) on different VLANs.
I have about 130 customers (split between 6 RocketM2 and a few dozen on 6 Rocket-5AC) on tower A. All APs and CPEs are in bridge mode and on VLAN 18. Customers have their own routers and we use PPPoE.
All CPEs on tower A were receiving 1-3mbps and at times 5+ mbps; causing 100% airtime utilization on our APs. I would have a hard time logging into a CPE, sometimes taking minutes to load the WebUI.
I have a RoomAlert that monitors power running on port 21 on the same VLAN. Normally I see very little traffic (20kbps or less) on this unless we load the webUI to look at the status. As you can see below the switch is sending unicast traffic out of this port as well.
Originally the switch was running older firmware and I upgraded to the latest (1.4.9) to see if there was a bug. This did not help so we replaced the switch with a newer model. The new switch didn't fix the problem either.
-Upgraded firmware on WS-24-400A from 1.4.6 to 1.4.9. No fix
-Replaced with a WS-26-400-AC which had 1.4.7 pre-installed (did not upgrade to latest). No fix
I had no choice other than to install a different switch. The switch installed now is a Cisco 2960. Everything was moved to the 2960 except for the local PtMP APs (they remained on the Netonix). The Netonix is uplinked (port 24) to the 2960 and set as a trunk.
After this change the unicast flooding stopped. Below are several screenshots.
I also took screenshots of the MAC table. First screenshot is before the 2960 was installed and the second is after.
Notice, with all devices off of the Netonix other than the PtMP APs (on VLAN18) the MAC table is populated correctly.
I have some other Netonix switches that I'm also starting to noticing unicast flooding. I believe this issues has been going on for a while but slowly getting worse as this tower is more populated than others. And it's seems like after Christmas we seen this flooding escalate probably because of more traffic from users.
I have also attached a few more screenshots of different tabs in the Netonix to give a better understanding of the setup.
Thank you in advance for any help and/or suggestions.