![]() Wireshark will basically look at a wire, chomp on its packets, and show you the guts. To be more certain of a broadcast storm, we need to use a free tool called Wireshark. Here in the PingPlotter Cave, we made a broadcast storm of our own by plugging one switch into itself to not only capture the mess that ensued but to show just how easy it is to cause such a large, catastrophic issue. You’re now one step closer to identifying a broadcast storm. If you have errors on every hop, you can be sure you’re experiencing an actual network issue and not a simple device outage. After you’re done freaking out, right-click the column headers and hit “Errors.” This will bring up a column showing you any networking errors. When looking at a PingPlotter trace to any target (internal or external), pretty much everything except your loopback, 127.0.0.1 (home, sweet home), will be red. You’ll need to use a couple handy tools to find this out, and PingPlotter is your first stop. However, there are a few ways you can identify if a storm is causing everything on your network to go full Y2K. On the surface, a broadcast storm can look like any other severe network outage. At the end of the day, there’s a layer 2 device plugged into itself, directly or indirectly, and it’s causing you some big problems. ![]() So, what causes a broadcast storm? They can be caused by a lot of different things, but normally it boils down to poor hardware (like using hubs in an enterprise environment instead of switches), inexperienced network management, or someone getting a little excited and plugging in some devices where they shouldn’t have. ![]() Even though broadcast storming is a layer 2 issue, it’s going to cause issues up the OSI ladder that will nullify network functionality all the way to layer 7. Think of a broadcast storm as an accidental DDoS on your own network. The frame then ends up stuck in a cycle where it goes back to the original device and just keeps regenerating itself until the wire is so bogged down you can’t even Slack a meme. ![]() Broadcast radiation and storming occur when a broadcast frame (DHCP or ARP request) or a multicast frame (OSPF or EIGRP message) enters a switch, is propagated out to all ports, then loops back to all the ports on the devices it just went to. So, other than sounding cool, what’s a broadcast storm? The storm is actually an extreme version of something called broadcast radiation. However, with a bit of sleuthing and the right tools, you can find your way to the eye of the storm and clear things up for good. ![]() And when we say completely, we mean it - an entire office with zero connection. With one simple mistake, a network can suffer a broadcast storm that locks up traffic completely for everyone connected. As the possibilities scream through your head, you start to think it might be one of the worst: a broadcast storm. One second, you’re chilling in that sweet new chair you just expensed, and the next, all the blood is draining from your face. It’s the absolute worst thing you can hear. A Broadcast Storm Defined & How to Fix ItĪ broadcast storm can send a network to its knees, and all it takes is one little slip-up. ![]()
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