Prevent Excessive Broadcasts from an ending hub/switch connected to a Procurve switch

[stephnane]

Hi.

In some of our meeting rooms, we've got "ending" switches, which does'nt support Spanning-Tree (other brand than HP), only to help people to connect during meetings. But users are what they are, they sometimes plug cables in bad order and makes loop on the same switch...

STP protocol is enabled on all Procurve switches.

Is there any way to configure something, on HP procurve switches 2524/28242510, to prevent these "out-of-procurve-network" loops ? Could the "Flow Ctrl", in the config menu of each port, helps me ?

Tks a lot

PS : Here are logs from the switch, the "non-STP switch" is plug in port 15 :

I 04/05/45 12:03:08 ports: port 15 is Blocked by STP
I 04/05/45 12:03:13 ports: port 26 is now on-line
I 04/05/45 12:03:13 ports: port 25 is Blocked by STP
W 04/05/45 12:03:13 FFI: port 15-Excessive Broadcasts. See help.
W 04/05/45 12:03:13 FFI: port 26-Excessive Broadcasts. See help.
I 04/05/45 12:03:14 ports: port 26 is Blocked by STP
I 04/05/45 12:03:14 ports: port 25 is now on-line
I 04/05/45 12:03:47 ports: port 26 is now on-line
W 04/05/45 12:03:57 FFI: port 25-Excessive Broadcasts. See help.
W 04/05/45 12:03:57 FFI: port 26-Excessive Broadcasts. See help.
I 04/05/45 12:05:01 ports: port 24 is Blocked by STP
I 04/05/45 12:05:01 ports: port 25 is Blocked by STP
I 04/05/45 12:05:02 ports: port 26 is Blocked by STP
I 04/05/45 12:05:02 ports: port 24 is now on-line
I 04/05/45 12:05:02 vlan: PstTel virtual LAN disabled
I 04/05/45 12:05:02 vlan: PstTel virtual LAN enabled
I 04/05/45 12:05:03 ports: port 25 is now on-line
W 04/05/45 12:05:14 FFI: port 2-High collision or drop rate. See help.
W 04/05/45 12:05:14 FFI: port 3-High collision or drop rate. See help.

[John Gelten]

Yes you can ... !

See the Advanced Traffic Management Guide and look for Configuring Loop Protection.

For the E2510, the guide is HERE and the Configuring Loop Protection paragraph starts at page 5-31

But be VERY carefull only to enable this on interfaces towards these dumb switches; you could enable it on all edge-ports if you want. But never enable it on ports that connect to other switches; there you should definitely let [M|R]STP do the trick. Otherwise it will give you an enormous headache some time later when you least expect it... (been there, got hurt ;- )