Troubleshooting Extreme Latency in an Unmanaged Switch Network
Question
A technician is connecting multiple switches to create a large network for a new office.
The switches are unmanaged Layer 2 switches with multiple connections between each pair.
The network is experiencing an extreme amount of latency.
Which of the following is MOST likely occurring?
Answers
Explanations
Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer
A. B. C. D.C.
The most likely cause of the extreme latency in the network is a broadcast storm (option C).
A broadcast storm occurs when a broadcast packet is forwarded continuously across the network, creating a loop that generates excessive traffic and uses up network resources. This can happen in a network that has multiple switches with redundant connections between them, as each switch will broadcast the packet to all its ports, including the port it received the broadcast packet from. This can cause the network to slow down or even crash.
In this scenario, the unmanaged Layer 2 switches are not equipped to prevent or handle broadcast storms. Managed switches, on the other hand, have features like Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) or Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) that can prevent broadcast storms by disabling redundant links.
Ethernet collisions (option A) occur when two or more devices transmit data on the same Ethernet segment at the same time, causing the data to collide and become corrupted. However, this is unlikely to be the cause of the extreme latency in this scenario, as the switches are unmanaged and therefore do not support collision detection and avoidance.
A DDoS attack (option B) is a malicious attempt to overwhelm a network or server with traffic from multiple sources. While this can cause latency and network disruption, it is unlikely in this scenario since it would require a deliberate attack rather than a network configuration issue.
Routing loops (option D) occur when routing protocols in a network fail to converge and continue to forward packets in a loop, causing them to be forwarded endlessly between routers. However, this is unlikely in this scenario as the switches are unmanaged and therefore not involved in routing packets between different subnets.
