Reduce Broadcasts

[iolair]

I'm a newbie to Windows networks, and I've just inherited a Windows 2008 network that seems to have a lot of broadcasts travelling over it. Is there a way to reduce the number of broadcasts? It's like 3 out of 4 packets are broadcasts, and they're ARP requests. Both DNS and WINS are enabled, is that a problem? Thanks in advance.

Joe Broadman

 

[kmcferrin]

If your environment doesn't need WINS or NetBIOS then you can disable them. Unfortunately some poorly coded applications still exist that require NetBIOS name resolution in order to function properly. Though it does seem strange that such a high percentage of traffic would be broadcast.

________________________________________
CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Security+
MCTS:Windows 7
MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Server Administrator
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator
MCITP:Virtualization Administrator 2008 R2
Certified Quest vWorkspace Administrator

 

[iolair]

I'm not sure if I need NetBIOS or not, but I've got a way to test that in a lab environment, so I will. Thanks for the tip. Yes, I'd love to be able to do away with WINS. And what I'm seeing are ARP requests mostly on the broadcasts. Not much else in the way of broadcasts. Thanks.

 

[kmills]

iolair,
Depending on your switching equipment and if you have arp requests for the same devices, you might be able to put in some static ARP entries. We had to do that because of Windows Network Load Balancing and the way our switches handled it.

The Windows NLB issue is well documented, which doesn't help if you don't know to look for it. Once we found that out, though, it greatly reduced traffic.

KMills

 

[iolair]

Whoa! Thanks, didn't even think to look at that. We have all Cisco switches.

Iolair MacWalter
Network Engineer