ProCurve equipment in Novell enviornment

[Preston Gallwas]

Our entire school district runs Netware 5.1 with eDirectory 8.72 -- I've been told that spanning tree prevents some of the authentication packets from passing to the novell client.

However, cisco developed a command, "portfast" to help solve this. Do procurve switches have a config similar to portfast to allow spanning tree to operate in a netware enviornment?

Are there other ways to help thwart broadcast storms as a result of network loops (...our users seem to find interesting ways to plug the cable in twice...sometimes despite not even having 2 hot ports!)

[Les Ligetfalvy · Accepted solution]

You mean RSTP? HP has several variations on it.

There was a time it was adequate to simply turn off Auto-MDIX but these days everything has it. I still prefer to fix it at the switch. Don't like seeing the switch and the end devices negotiating MDI. It's bad enough they flip-flop on polarity which cannot be controlled.

[Preston Gallwas]

Woosh...right over my head ;-)

auto-MDIX...is that what negotiates a straight thru / crossover cable link?

RSTP brings ports on, then, in forwarding mode? :-)

Thanks!

[Kell van Daal]

The equivalent of portfast is the following command on HP ProCurve switched:

Switch(config)#spanning-tree [portlist] edge-port

Also at Les. Some switches have the ability to set MDI mode to a permanent value in the configuration. This was introduced with a new firmware.