Cisco Storm-Control Configuration

One security issue that has to do with flooding is called a broadcast storm. When we have an excessive amount of broadcast traffic on the network then all devices within the broadcast domain will suffer. The switch has to flood all broadcast frames to interfaces in the same VLAN, hosts within the VLAN might have to process these frames (ARP requests for example).

Too much broadcast traffic could be caused by malicious software but also by a malfunctioning NIC. To protect ourselves against this, Cisco switches offer the storm-control feature. We can configure a threshold on interfaces to set a limit to the number of broadcast, multicast or unknown unicast traffic and an action when the threshold is exceeded.

Here’s an example how to configure this:

SW1(config-if)#storm-control ?
  action     Action to take for storm-control
  broadcast  Broadcast address storm control
  multicast  Multicast address storm control
  unicast    Unicast address storm control

We can set an action and threshold for broadcast, multicast or unknown unicast traffic. Let’s take a look at broadcast traffic:

SW1(config)#interface FastEthernet0/1
SW1(config-if)#storm-control broadcast level ?
  <0.00 - 100.00>  Enter rising threshold
  bps              Enter suppression level in bits per second
  pps              Enter suppression level in packets per second

I have a couple of options here…when you use the rising threshold then the value you enter is a percentage of the interface bandwidth. The other two options are BPS (bits per second) or PPS (packets per second). Let’s start with a simple example:

SW1(config-if)#storm-control broadcast level 30

Whenever broadcast traffic exceeds 30% of the interface bandwidth, we will take action. I didn’t configure any action yet but the default action will drop exceeding traffic.

Let’s look at an example for multicast:

SW1(config-if)#storm-control multicast level bps ?
  <0.0 - 10000000000.0>[k|m|g]  Enter rising threshold

Now I can select a threshold in BPS. You can use K,M or G to indicate Kbps, Mbps or Gbps. Let’s pick something:

SW1(config-if)#storm-control multicast level bps 10m

Once multicast exceeds 10Mbps, it will be dropped. In the previous examples I only configured a rising threshold. This means that once we exceed the threshold, the traffic will be dropped. Once we are below this threshold it will be permitted. We can also use a falling threshold:

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Forum Replies

  1. question, on the last sentence you said the default action is exceeding traffic will be dropped. but you can also use to shutdown the interface or send a trap.

    if you configure to send a trap, the exceeding traffic will not be dropped? just only to inform you that it exceeds?

    because on the selection of action, its only “Shutdown” and “Trap”. theres no “Drop the exceeding traffic”.

    or it works this way that, it will drop the exceeding traffic, you just need to choose the 2nd option on what to do with it? is it you’ll shutdown the interface or send a trap?

  2. Hi John,

    In both cases, the exceeding traffic will be dropped. The only difference is the “extra” action that we perform. Do you want to shut the interface or only send a SNMP trap? That’s it.

    Rene

  3. Hey Rene,

    Just wondering. Is it better to program both sides of a trunk for storm control? It seems to me that one side of the link is good enough. Also I assume that it’s OK to assign this to a port-channel? When I do so I notice that it writes the storm control parameters to both the trunk and port channel which I would expect.

    Thanks

  4. Hi Michael,

    I guess this depends on which end of the trunk you expect to have a broadcast storm :slight_smile: There’s no harm configuring this on both (or all) your switches. Configuring this on an etherchannel is no problem. Make sure you do this on the logical interface, not one of the member physical interfaces or it will be suspended.

    Rene

  5. Anyone know a good tool on Windows/Linux to generate a Broadcast, Unicast and Multicast Storm?
    Would be great to test this on my switches.

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