3COM CISCO AND SWITCHING PROBLEMS WITH NETWARE 1

[mojo2002]

At a site we have a cisco catalyst 4000 acting as a layer 2 switch.
About 9 months ago this was installed and we swapped from the previous 3com hub setup to the switched setup.

The problem is that there are about 20 machines with windows 95/98 running netware clients still running from the 3com hub because they will not (once patched into the switch) bring up the initial login to netware box before entering windows.

If I re-patch back into the 3COM hub the problem dissapears and the netware login appears when the machine is rebooted.

By the way, the machine is fully functional on the network when patched into the switch apart from the problem of the netware client login box not appearing.

Any ideas?

steven

 

[kurttorok]

Steven,

This appears to be a classic case of your switch needing Spanning Tree Protocol disabled.

You can do this with Cisco's Portfast commands, which disables STP on the port.

On a CatOS based switch use this command.

set spantree portfast Module#/Port# enable

You will want this command on all Host ports and NOT on backbone connections. STP prevents Bridging loops and is your friend, but the 50 Second STP checks are too long for NetWare Clients or Fast booting PCs. You will notice that some machines won't get the NetWare login or DHCP in some cases, which can cause problems in Microsoft networks as well.

Problem occurs when the NetWare client looks for the network and when the Switch is performing it's Spanning Tree check, the workstation can't see the network yet and the Novell Client stops loading and Windows continues to boot.

Kurt

 

[mojo2002]

So its good to use it on all PC's but not on the backbone?

 

[mojo2002]

ignore that last question.... the pennys just dropped ;-)

thanks for that, you've been a great help.

steven

 

[mojo2002]

Hi, I've disabled spantree portfast on the required port and the same problem is still occuring

 

[mojo2002]

any gen?

 

[Psychoid]

I've seen this before and it has always been the spantree issue that kurttoruk was speaking about.

Just want to verify that the workstation ports are all enabled, belong to the proper VLAN, and have spantree portfast enabled ------------
Bill
Consultant / Network Engineer
CNE, CCNA

 

[krr]

mojo2002 wrote: >> I've disabled spantree portfast on the required port and the same problem is still occuring

You have to enable portfast to get rid of the spanning-tree listening and learning delay. This will not disable spanning-tree on the port. It just makes the port forward data as soon as the link comes up and does the rest in background.

Btw. there is a warning message when enabling portfast. Just ignore it

Cheers *Rob

 

[mojo2002]

Thank you.