From: Frank Bures [mailto:lisfrank@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 4:41 AM
In my opinion, a switch should be immune to this admittedly insane manipulation. Otherwise, one can DoS the entire network just by shorting two RJ-45 network outlets in one's office together.
I believe what you are describing is officially called a bridge loop. A bridge loop occurs when a switch, or stack of switches are plugged into themselves. The result is that the switches report the same MAC address at multiple ports. The solution to this is called Spanning Tree Protocol. STP is a set of algorithms that help switches remove redundant MAC entries.
Reference: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2001/03/30/net_2nd_lang.html
-- Neil Watson | Gentoo Linux Network Administrator | Uptime 12 days http://watson-wilson.ca | 2.6.11.4 AMD Athlon(tm) MP 2000+ x 2
