Slow connection to default gateway

[AllenKass]

We use a Cat 4000 as our primary switch. An Axent Raptor firewall is used between the switch and a 3640 router. The input to the firewall is connected to a vlan that includes all devices to be protected by the fw. The inside address of the fw is used as the default gateway by the lan components.

Using both Win98 and WinNT workstations/servers, when you first log onto the network or if the pc has been sitting idle for approx. 20 minutes they seem to "Loose Connection" with the default gateway (i.e. Internet Access).
When using a web browser and trying to access an external web site, you get the waiting message in the status bar. Also, if you open a command prompt and ping the default gateway, you will get a timed-out response. You can browse to and/or ping any other internal system on the lan. Eventually after pressing reload several times, you will finally access an external web site or host system. This symptom is independent of DNS resolution as it also occurs when trying to access a host system by ip address as well.

If I have given enough description, does anyone have any suggestions as to where to go next.

Thanks,
Allen

 

[fynx]

Hi Allen,
Could be that your client ports on the 4000 are not forwarding packets succesfully at boot up. Boot a system and watch what the spanning tree for that port does. Listening - Learning - Forwarding etc... This can take over 50 seconds. Check that your client ports (AND ONLY YOUR CLIENT PORTS) are set to use spanning-tree portfast. This circumvents the listening and learning stages of ST and goes immediately to forwarding.

Good luck...
Phil. If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.

 

[AidanEnos]

Have you hard coded the port speeds on the uplinks (either 10, 100 full or half duplex) make sure you do it on BOTH the switch AND the PCs - and enable PortFast... it really speeds up connection times.

AidanEnos