Intel i217-LM NIC Causes Broadcast storm and High CPU

[mckneely1]

Wanted to post this here to help others that may be experiencing issues with broadcasts.   

If you have PC's with the Intel i217-LM NIC if you don't have the latest driver from Intel the NIC will cause an IPV6 broadcast storm when the computer goes into sleep/hibernate.  You have to have at least two PC's on your network in sleep/hibernate mode.  It causes the same affect as a network loop.  In my network it would cause the MDF CPU to go to 100% and basically shut the network down.  

We have Lenovo M93 desktops that have this NIC and I know that there are other PC's that have his same NIC and experience the same problem.

When the broadcast storm is happening you can issue the command 

show interfaces | include is up|line|broadcast on your MDF switch to find which interfaces have high broadcasts.  You may have to trace it through your uplinks to your IDF's.  You can then shut those interfaces to stop the broadcast storm.

Your long term solution will be to get the latest NIC driver from Intel and update your PC's.

[Leo Laohoo]

Do you have broadcast storm control configured in your interface?

[mckneely1]

No I do not have broadcast storm control configured.  That would have err-disabled the interface but the problem would not be resolved without updating the driver. 

Cisco TAC recommended adding the command:

ipv6 mld snooping

When MLD snooping is enabled, a per-VLAN IPv6 multicast address table is constructed in software and hardware. The switch then performs IPv6 multicast-address based bridging in hardware, avoiding to be processed by software.

[Leo Laohoo]

No I do not have broadcast storm control configured.  That would have err-disabled the interface but the problem would not be resolved without updating the driver. 

Not it won't.  If you enable Broadcast/Multicast storm control, the switch will "limit" the amount of broadcast/multicast to the limit you've defined.  But it will never err-disable a port.  

The interface-level command is "storm-control broadcast level <PERCENT>".

[mckneely1]

Ah yes but you could do:

(config-if)#storm-control action shutdown

and it would err-disable the port during a broadcast storm

with the port shut the broadcasts would stop

[Leo Laohoo]

Ok, yes you could.  But what I am stating is limiting the traffic.  

[Tagir Temirgaliyev]

is this lenovo desktop connected by ipv6 or ipv4 ?

[mckneely1]

It's connected IPV4 but because of the faulty NIC driver it starts broadcasting IPV6 when in sleep/hibernate mode.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12291431/ipv6-broadcast-storm-caused-hp-eliteone-800-intel-i217-lm-nic-how-find-hosts

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/A-M-and-Edge-Series-ThinkCentre/M83-and-M93p-ipv6-storms-intel-i217-LM-NIC/td-p/1600686

[Tagir Temirgaliyev]

disable ipv6 on nic card

[mckneely1]

disabling ipv6 on the NIC doesn't stop the broadcast storm with the faulty driver.  Good idea though.  I had the same thought.