Whether an IPS device is straight through when powered down

[ravi.mehta]

Hi there,

Customer has asked:

When an IPS 420 is switched off does it still pass traffic through the ethernet interfaces as straight through. He has seen this with other hardware and is wondering if this is the case withe the IPS's

[mhellman]

http://forum.cisco.com/eforum/servlet/NetProf?page=netprof&forum=Security&topic=Intrusion%20Prevention%20Systems/IDS&CommCmd=MB%3Fcmd%3Ddisplay_location%26location%3D.1dd9fa80

[gabelar]

This isn't the default behavior of the IPS 4200 but can be achieved with a hardware TAP.

If you need failover, and don't want to do a tap. You can put an ethernet cable in parallel with the IPS 4200, and make sure the IPS device is plugged into a lower port number than the ethernet cable.

With this cable in place if the IPS device fails, spanning tree will take over and the traffic will be redirected to use the cable as the primary path.