Activity light flashes every 2 seconds or so on my switches

Jesse7 · Nov 10, 2005, 3:36 AM

Quick easy question (I hope). I have several switches around my house so there is a switch in most rooms. Since installing PFsense all my switches activity lights will flash every two seconds anywhere a network cable is connected. Even if No Pc is turned on ( I think).

I did a search of the faq and mailing lists but didn't find anything.

It's not really bothering me I am just curious as to what setting is causing this and why it is doing it.

whetu · Nov 10, 2005, 10:37 AM

get ethereal on one of your computers and let it packet sniff for a while, then see if you can come up with some correlation. It's probably just broadcast traffic :)

DamienD · Nov 13, 2005, 5:42 PM

Hello,

I noticed this too…

I wonder what it is...

I might play a bit with etereal ;-)

Jesse7 · Nov 13, 2005, 8:04 PM

Cool, not the only person then. I haven't had a chance to play with ethereal yet had other problems I havn't been able to solve yet. Let me know if you find anything, I will try have a play tonight.

Jesse7 · Nov 23, 2005, 9:15 PM

I did a fresh install of .94 and it seems to have stopped whatever activity was causing this. The only option I can think of was some option that could make finding otherpeople on my lan almost instant rather than a few seconds wait. I can't remember the name of the option and didn't find it again "yet" I will have another look for it tonight, and see if it is enabled.

Phobia · Nov 25, 2005, 1:26 PM

Hi there,

Did you ever figure out the problem? My switch lights are also flashing every second or two.

Let us know… thanks!

-- Phob

hoba · Nov 25, 2005, 3:04 PM

Any chance you have CARP configured? With CARP the machines are sending out "Hey, I'm still alive" broadcasts so other clustermembers know about the availablility.

Phobia · Nov 25, 2005, 3:38 PM

Its not PFSense on my network … I also have a Linksys WRT54GS which is flashed with a 3rd party firmware called DDWRT and used as a wireless access point.

It turns out that my 2 second flashes are caused by something called STP or Spanning Tree Prototcal. The fix for me was easy, I just disabled STP on my WRT54GS and voila, no more flashes.

I should say, Ethereal was key to locating the issue... I had never seen a STP packet before... interesting! :)

Thanks all!

-- Phob

hoba · Nov 25, 2005, 4:26 PM

pfSense supports STP as well if used with bridgeconfiguration. Somebody of you are using it as Bridge?

Jesse7 · Nov 26, 2005, 1:47 AM

@hoba:

Any chance you have CARP configured? With CARP the machines are sending out "Hey, I'm still alive" broadcasts so other clustermembers know about the availablility.

I don't think I had CARP enabled perhaps I did or had an option like that enabled. Is carp enabled by default? When I went to the page that allows you to configure carp nothing is ticked, but when I go to carp status it shows three nodes and there is a button "disable CARP" no other info.

And yeh I don't have the 2 second blinking anymore.

sullrich · Nov 26, 2005, 2:07 AM

@Jesse7:

@hoba:

Any chance you have CARP configured? With CARP the machines are sending out "Hey, I'm still alive" broadcasts so other clustermembers know about the availablility.

I don't think I had CARP enabled perhaps I did or had an option like that enabled. Is carp enabled by default? When I went to the page that allows you to configure carp nothing is ticked, but when I go to carp status it shows three nodes and there is a button "disable CARP" no other info.

And yeh I don't have the 2 second blinking anymore.

CARP ip's are added under Virtual IP's. They WILL make your switch port blink every second, its a heartbeat.