lanadmin "Inbound Unknown Protocols" hich count

[Byron Myers]

I have a K410 with a 100Mbit Ethernet, HP-PB. lanadmin is showing the "Inbound Unknown Protocols" steadily increasing. The system has been up 26 days, this count is at 65153862, and increasing. The system also has an active Token ring NIC. Some network traffic is routed to/from a FDDI LAN as well.
The Token ring NIC's Unknown Prodocols count is also steadily increasing - it is currently at 4264101.

Is this normal?
Would someone explain to me why these counts keep increasing?

[Brian Hackley]

Bryon,

Unknown protocols are typically non-IP packets seen on the LAN. Specifically they are packets received, for which there is no upper layer protocol available to accept them. These could be any variety of protocol used on the network, but typically SMB or IPX packets.

You could use nettl/netfmt to take a network trace to find out more about these packets. ITRC Knowledge documents KBRC00001272 and KBRC00001357 should provide you with details on how to do so.

Hope this helps,

-> Brian Hackley