VTP client spontaneously becoming server?

[jesse_driskill]

Hello all,

I recently heard of an instance in which a VTP client was connected to a network without first being erased or having it's VTP revision reset to 0. The revision number on this client was higher than that of the network it was connected to and, according to the person I was speaking with, the vtp client promoted itself to vtp server and wiped out their vlan config.

My question is: Can this actually happen or has someone fed him a line? I've never heard of that occuring and cannot find any documents referencing anything like that.

Thanks,

--jesse

[Bobby Thekkekandam]

Hi Jesse,

This certainly can happen, and is explained in this document:

http://www.cisco.com/warp/customer/473/21.html#vtp_ts_rec_ins

[glen.grant]

Yup certainly true if you ask anyone who has worked on this equipment for any length of time , which is why you strip all configs before reconfiguring . Or it can be as simple as changeing the vtp domain to something other than what is in the network and then changing it back.

[Kevin Dorrell]

This does indeed happen. It's not that the client has become a server, it's just the normal behavior of a client is not what you might expect from its name. The VTP domain can be updated by clients as well as by servers; all that is needed is a higher configuration revision. The only difference between a server and a client is that the CLI in a client will not allow you to modify the database.

Kevin Dorrell

Luxembourg