HP 2650 broadcast storms (stp?)

[jrubinstein]

Hi all,

We have four hp 2650 switches serving one of our areas, whenever our computers are switched on we see broadcast storms, of course we have broadcast-limits in place so the network doesn't stop but I want to get rid of them. We've checked the physical bit and gone through all the computers and I'm now convinced that the storms coincide with messages sent to the IP broadcast (xxx.xxx.xxx.255). But the computer only sends one such message.

Looked at the configuration on these switches and I think I'm seeing something weird but maybe not. For each switch when I ask for the spanning tree configuration I'm seeing some ports which forward to the switch's own mac address. Are we normal??

Thanks in advance.

[Hybrid]

Have you used Wireshark or Ethereal to sniff out the source of the packets? It's most likely coming from one of your network printers with multiple protocols enabled or one of your servers ARPing.

[jrubinstein]

Yep, we used Ethereal, the broadcasts come from regular machines, but the originating message is a single netbios host announcement which is sent to the IP broadcast address, rather than the MAC one. That's why I'm wondering if the switch configuration is right.