Network Connection Drops out Randomly

[mrphil]

Having major headache here. I have a procurve network with 3 vlans Admin clients, curriculum clients and servers vlan, on the curriculum client vlan the student machines randomly lose connection to the server, you can run a ping test and will run fine for a while and then drop out for a second or so and then start pinging again. I have tested the connectivity on the other VLAns and there is no problem, nothing in the event logs on the switches router pc or server, have tested all cabling and all fine, I have an inclin that it has something to do with the STP configuration on the switches but nothing is apparent on the configuration can anyone think what I am missing?

[spc-rocket]

Hi,

It could be STP, generall the rule is to disable STP on the ports that connects to servers, printers and desktops since these won't causea loop. STP should only be enabled on ports/interfaces that connects to other switches.

On cisco you can turn on the portfast on the port to make it go into forwarding state immediatly and skip the STP calculation.

Also have a look at the firmware for the switch and see if a newer version of the firmware is available.

HTH,

Ash.

[Geoff]

Also, you could just be simply exceeding the switches capacity. Normally it's not a bandwidth issue though, it's usually the packets per second that brings a cheap switch down.

[mrphil]

Checked STP on all CLient ports seem to be configured correctly only links between switches have STP enabled. Firmware was updated in the summer so should be upto date, with regards to the switches the core is a HP Procurve 5400 and the edge switches are 2626's and a couple of 5300's but the problems only seem to occur on the 2626's, absolutely bizarre will press on with the investigation.

Today I think I will try one ICT suite and disable STP on the switches totally... should give a definative answer to if it is STP or not