Broadcast Storms on Ethernet

[Martin Holland]

We have three ethernet cables here. One main backbone and two smaller
networks. Each smaller network is joined to the main backbone by a SUN
workstation with two ethernet cards in it. We use subnetting with a mask
of 255.255.255.0.  We have found that if any UNIX node on the main
backbone sends a broadcast, usually from a RWHO daemon it causes the SUN
gateways to send a storm of broadcasts onto the network each containing
the nodename of the node that sent the origional broadcast.  These storms
cause the ethernet performance to degrade badly.  Is there anything we can
to stop the gateway nodes from sending broadcast storms.  These storms
only origionate from gateway machines, other SUN workstations on the main
backbone are unaffected.

Martin C. Holland       Internal e/mail: HOLLANDM at PHIRHV1
Philips Research Labs.  External e/mail: HOLLANDM at prl.philips.co.uk
Redhill, Surrey. U.K.
Tel: 0293 785544 X 5911