Prevent broadcast storm?

Question

Hi,

Is there any way to prevent broadcast storm at AP? I have bridge configuration in my WLANs.

Regards,

Alberto.

keith_redfield · Answer

This is more a DOS attack than a broadcast storm (latter implies more participants). There's a couple of things at work here.

Wifi is a shared media. A mis-behaving client acts, in effect, like a source of interference. So if you were pinging the AP via wireless - you may have just had a lot of latency in the radio spectrum. If you were pinging via wired. the AP may have been over-taxed "listening" to the offending client.  And everyone might have slowed down due to overlong transmission by the offending client.

The ZoneDirector does offer some protective services - see the "Configuring Wireless Intrusion Prevention" chapter in the ZoneDirector User Guide

unknown · Answer

Hi Kevin,

but this only prevent to flood broadcast between clients. Let me explain, we had this issue:

- AP started, wireless wlans deployed. (ping to management interface of the AP it was ok, milliseconds)

- Wireless clients started to connect

- After some minutes, ping to management interface raise up to 1 second.

- Packet capture at AP, we saw a lot of broadcast from a wireless client.

- Blocked client, ping in milliseconds.

So... it seems the broadcast affected the AP and I can't prevent it making vlans and isolating traffic from clients because it is communication between wireless device and AP.

kevin_joseph_56 · Answer

Hi Alberto,

On an AP we can limit broadcast storm by creating Vlan's.

All the client traffic will be then segmented, also please enable wireless client isolation.

Regards,

Kevin