Cisco Catalyst static CAM table entries

That’s maybe not interesting for everybody but when you use Windows Network Load Balancing in your network you should definitively configure static CAM table entries otherwise your VLAN will be flood with multicast traffic. You can create different VLANs for your Windows NLB instances to separate the traffic but that’s more an work around and with static CAM entries nicer from the design.

The static CAM table entries just restrict the multicast traffic to specific ports on your switch where your Servers are located and keep otherwise the network free.

On your router you will have an entry like that:

arp 10.0.0.100 0300.5e11.1111

An static ARP entry with an multicast MAC address

Now to restrict the multicast traffic you use the following command:

mac-address-table static 0300.5e11.1111 vlan 100 interface gi0/10 gi0/11

Which just means that the multicast traffic for VLAN 100 will be flood through the interfaces Gi0/10 and Gi0/11 and all other interfaces will not see the multicast traffic. Its a bit an administrative overhead and you have to think a little bit about that before you can implement but an clean traffic flow within your network.

If you want to read more about it have a look here: Catalyst Switches for Microsoft Network Load Balancing Configuration Example

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