"Kevin Welch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
A broadcast frame takes up the same bandwidth as any other frame of
the same length. The urban legend that "broadcasts consume
bandwidth" really refers to broadcast storms, so you are looking at
the correct problem.
A NetBEUI host that sends seven name resolution broadcasts when one
would do is taking up the bandwidth that would be associated with
seven more rational hosts.
The more common effect of broadcasts is that they impact the CPU of
all hosts that hear them. CID has some old figures showing the
effect of 10 Mbps broadcasts on a Sparc 2 host.
100 per second 3% CPU
1000 per second 25% CPU
3800 per second Host OS crashed
>I am playing around with a switch and looking at the storm-control
>feature. I cannot seem to find any reference on what good values
>are for thresholds to indicate a broadcast storm. I am currently
>using 200 broadcasts per second and I think thats about right, but I
>would like to know what the rest of you think.
>
The more hosts in a broadcast domain, the greater the effect of a
broadcast storm can be. Remember that a storm on one host can
trigger storms on others. Without a huge amount of science behind
it, I use about 500 per second as a basic value, but 200 is certainly
within reason.
Setting it too low, if you have something like NetBEUI, can interfere
with operations.
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