Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!gvgpsa!davew
From: davew@gvgpsa.GVG.TEK.COM (David C. White)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: DEC LAN Bridges
Message-ID: <1041@gvgpsa.GVG.TEK.COM>
Date: 19 Oct 88 17:43:32 GMT
References: <773@dogie.edu>
Reply-To: davew@gvgpsa.GVG.TEK.COM (David C. White)
Organization: Grass Valley Group, Inc., Grass Valley, CA
Lines: 25

In article <773@dogie.edu> dorl@vms.macc.wisc.edu (Michael Dorl - MACC) writes:
>We have been having a rash of recent problems that would best
>be explained by the fact that DEC LAN-100 Bridges stop forwarding
>all 1-s broadcast traffic.  Problems include tcp/ip sites that
>do not see routed routing traffic and tcp/ip sites that can not
>initiate a session to a machine on the other side of a bridge.


This is caused by the bridge seeing a src address of ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff
on one side or the other of the bridge.  Once it sees this src address
from then on it will not forward broadcast traffic depending which side
of the bridge you see it on.  One very easy way to lock up the DEC
bridge is to ping the broadcast address for the network.  There is a
fix on the way from DEC to get around this problem.  Pester your
service engineer to get the updated firmware for the bridge.  It isn't
released yet, but he may be able to get it.  In the meantime you
will be stuck reinitiailizing the bridge(s) whenever this happens.

I would also question what the real cause of the problem is, in other
words, what device on your network is sending out messages with
ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff as the source address?  Find the culprit(s) and
fix them also.
-- 
Dave White	Grass Valley Group, Inc.   PHONE: +1 916.478.3052
P.O. Box 1114  	Grass Valley, CA  95945    davew@gvgpsa.gvg.tek.com