Broadcast Storm in Cat 5500

[NetSpec]

Hi
Need some help. I have 2 Cat5500 and i have 4 vlan. I have a NT server link to the cat5500. Experiencing BroadCast Problem in the Lan. NT Server complain that it MasterBroswer is taken over by another client. I have alot of sites using cisco have this problem, but for 3com no such problem. The network is slow while i'm doing a FTP from one vlan to the Server vlan.

What could be the problem ?

How do i solve the Masterbroswer problem or how can i stop that kind of broadcast and increase the performance on the network?

Thanks

 

[bjhagroo]

More than likely it's a protocol or advertisment misconfigured. Quickest way is to put a Sniffer or Fluke tester etc. and see who is top talker.

 

[wybnormal]

It happens.. with 3com or Cisco.. doesnt matter what brand. The problem is the browse master is timing out and one of the clients is requesting a forced election to say who the browse master is. The simplest answer if possible to to let one workstation on the other VLAN to be a browsemaster for it's segment. It just needs to stay on all the time. Other things to look at is how you are moving the broadcast packets between vlans. You need to pay attention to Ports 137 and 138. Check the clients and make sure they are H mode and NOT B mode. Make sure you are running WINS and that the clients are pointing there using directed broadcasts.. hence the H mode ( hybrid).

Snifer will give you the details to exactly which systems are causing problems.

MS has a white paper on this that simply says it's all Ciscos fault and to turn off all UDP forwarding.

Cisco has a white paper and gives a much better analysis to what the problem really is and how to "fix" it.

Mike S