Information About Ethernet Interfaces
The Ethernet ports can operate as standard Ethernet interfaces connected to servers or to a LAN.
The Ethernet interfaces are enabled by default.
Interface Command
You can enable the various capabilities of the Ethernet interfaces on a per-interface basis using the interface command. When you enter the interface command, you specify the following information:
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Interface type—All physical Ethernet interfaces use the ethernet keyword.
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Slot number:
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Slot 1 includes all the fixed ports.
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Slot 2 includes the ports on the upper expansion module (if populated).
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Slot 3 includes the ports on the lower expansion module (if populated).
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Slot 4 includes the ports on the lower expansion module (if populated).
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Port number— Port number within the group.
The interface numbering convention is extended to support use with a Cisco Nexus Fabric Extender as follows:
switch(config)# interface ethernet [chassis/]slot/port
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The chassis ID is an optional entry that you can use to address the ports of a connected Fabric Extender. The chassis ID is configured on a physical Ethernet or EtherChannel interface on the switch to identify the Fabric Extender discovered through the interface. The chassis ID ranges from 100 to 199.
About 40-Gbps Interface Speed
You can enable 40-Gigabits per second (Gbps) speed on up to 12 interfaces. You enable 40-Gbps speed on the first port of a group of four adjacent ports. For example, you enable 40-Gbps speed on port 1 of port group 1-4, port 5 of port group 5-8, and port 9 of port group 9-12, and so on. The 40-Gbps port numbering is Ethernet interface 1/1, 1/5, 1/9, 1/13, 1/17, and so on.
The configuration is applied to the first port, not on the remaining three ports in the group. The remaining ports act like the ports without an enhanced small form-factor pluggable (SFP+) transceiver inserted. The configuration takes effect immediately. You do not need to reload the switch.
An SFP+ transceiver security check is performed only on the first port of the group.
Unidirectional Link Detection Parameter
The Cisco-proprietary Unidirectional Link Detection (UDLD) protocol allows ports that are connected through fiber optics or copper (for example, Category 5 cabling) Ethernet cables to monitor the physical configuration of the cables and detect when a unidirectional link exists. When the switch detects a unidirectional link, UDLD shuts down the affected LAN port and alerts the user. Unidirectional links can cause a variety of problems, including spanning tree topology loops.
UDLD is a Layer 2 protocol that works with the Layer 1 protocols to determine the physical status of a link. At Layer 1, autonegotiation takes care of physical signaling and fault detection. UDLD performs tasks that autonegotiation cannot perform, such as detecting the identities of neighbors and shutting down misconnected LAN ports. When you enable both autonegotiation and UDLD, Layer 1 and Layer 2 detections work together to prevent physical and logical unidirectional connections and the malfunctioning of other protocols.
A unidirectional link occurs whenever traffic transmitted by the local device over a link is received by the neighbor but traffic transmitted from the neighbor is not received by the local device. If one of the fiber strands in a pair is disconnected, and if autonegotiation is active, the link does not stay up. In this case, the logical link is undetermined, and UDLD does not take any action. If both fibers are working normally at Layer 1, then UDLD at Layer 2 determines whether those fibers are connected correctly and whether traffic is flowing bidirectionally between the correct neighbors. This check cannot be performed by autonegotiation, because autonegotiation operates at Layer 1.
A Cisco Nexus device periodically transmits UDLD frames to neighbor devices on LAN ports with UDLD enabled. If the frames are echoed back within a specific time frame and they lack a specific acknowledgment (echo), the link is flagged as unidirectional and the LAN port is shut down. Devices on both ends of the link must support UDLD in order for the protocol to successfully identify and disable unidirectional links.
The following figure shows an example of a unidirectional link condition. Device B successfully receives traffic from Device A on the port. However, Device A does not receive traffic from Device B on the same port. UDLD detects the problem and disables the port.
Default UDLD Configuration
The following table shows the default UDLD configuration.
Feature |
Default Value |
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UDLD global enable state |
Globally disabled |
UDLD aggressive mode |
Disabled |
UDLD per-port enable state for fiber-optic media |
Enabled on all Ethernet fiber-optic LAN ports |
UDLD per-port enable state for twisted-pair (copper) media |
Enabled |
UDLD Aggressive and Nonaggressive Modes
UDLD aggressive mode is disabled by default. You can configure UDLD aggressive mode only on point-to-point links between network devices that support UDLD aggressive mode. If UDLD aggressive mode is enabled, when a port on a bidirectional link that has a UDLD neighbor relationship established stops receiving UDLD frames, UDLD tries to reestablish the connection with the neighbor. After eight failed retries, the port is disabled.
To prevent spanning tree loops, nonaggressive UDLD with the default interval of 15 seconds is fast enough to shut down a unidirectional link before a blocking port transitions to the forwarding state (with default spanning tree parameters).
When you enable the UDLD aggressive mode, the following occurs:
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One side of a link has a port stuck (both transmission and receive)
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One side of a link remains up while the other side of the link is down
In these cases, the UDLD aggressive mode disables one of the ports on the link, which prevents traffic from being discarded.
SVI Autostate
The Switch Virtual Interface (SVI) represents a logical interface between the bridging function and the routing function of a VLAN in the device. By default, when a VLAN interface has multiple ports in the VLAN, the SVI goes to the down state when all the ports in the VLAN go down.
Autostate behavior is the operational state of an interface that is governed by the state of the various ports in its corresponding VLAN. An SVI interface on a VLAN comes up when there is at least one port in that vlan that is in STP forwarding state. Similarly, this interface goes down when the last STP forwarding port goes down or goes to another STP state.
By default, Autostate calculation is enabled. You can disable Autostate calculation for an SVI interface and change the default value.
Note |
Nexus 3000 Series switches do not support bridging between two VLANs when an SVI for one VLAN exists on the same device as the bridging link. Traffic coming into the device and bound for the SVI is dropped as a IPv4 discard. This is because the BIA MAC address is shared across VLANs/SVIs with no option to modify the MAC of the SVI. |
Cisco Discovery Protocol
The Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) is a device discovery protocol that runs over Layer 2 (the data link layer) on all Cisco-manufactured devices (routers, bridges, access servers, and switches) and allows network management applications to discover Cisco devices that are neighbors of already known devices. With CDP, network management applications can learn the device type and the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agent address of neighboring devices that are running lower-layer, transparent protocols. This feature enables applications to send SNMP queries to neighboring devices.
CDP runs on all media that support Subnetwork Access Protocol (SNAP). Because CDP runs over the data-link layer only, two systems that support different network-layer protocols can learn about each other.
Each CDP-configured device sends periodic messages to a multicast address, advertising at least one address at which it can receive SNMP messages. The advertisements also contain time-to-live, or holdtime information, which is the length of time a receiving device holds CDP information before discarding it. Each device also listens to the messages sent by other devices to learn about neighboring devices.
The switch supports both CDP Version 1 and Version 2.
Default CDP Configuration
The following table shows the default CDP configuration.
Feature |
Default Setting |
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CDP interface state |
Enabled |
CDP timer (packet update frequency) |
60 seconds |
CDP holdtime (before discarding) |
180 seconds |
CDP Version-2 advertisements |
Enabled |
Error-Disabled State
An interface is in the error-disabled (err-disabled) state when the inteface is enabled administratively (using the no shutdown command) but disabled at runtime by any process. For example, if UDLD detects a unidirectional link, the interface is shut down at runtime. However, because the interface is administratively enabled, the interface status displays as err-disabled. Once an interface goes into the err-disabled state, you must manually reenable it or you can configure an automatic timeout recovery value. The err-disabled detection is enabled by default for all causes. The automatic recovery is not configured by default.
When an interface is in the err-disabled state, use the errdisable detect cause command to find information about the error.
You can configure the automatic err-disabled recovery timeout for a particular err-disabled cause by changing the time variable.
The errdisable recovery cause command provides automatic recovery after 300 seconds. To change the recovery period, use the errdisable recovery interval command to specify the timeout period. You can specify 30 to 65535 seconds.
To disable recovery of an interface from the err-disabled state, use the no errdisable recovery cause command.
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all—Enables a timer to recover from all causes.
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bpduguard—Enables a timer to recover from the bridge protocol data unit (BPDU) Guard error-disabled state.
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failed-port-state—Enables a timer to recover from a Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) set port state failure.
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link-flap—Enables a timer to recover from linkstate flapping.
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pause-rate-limit—Enables a timer to recover from the pause rate limit error-disabled state.
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udld—Enables a timer to recover from the Unidirectional Link Detection (UDLD) error-disabled state.
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loopback—Enables a timer to recover from the loopback error-disabled state.
If you do not enable the err-disabled recovery for the cause, the interface stays in the err-disabled state until you enter the shutdown and no shutdown commands. If the recovery is enabled for a cause, the interface is brought out of the err-disabled state and allowed to retry operation once all the causes have timed out. Use the show interface status err-disabled command to display the reason behind the error.
MTU Configuration
The switch does not fragment frames. As a result, the switch cannot have two ports in the same Layer 2 domain with different maximum transmission units (MTUs). A per-physical Ethernet interface MTU is not supported. Instead, the MTU is set according to the QoS classes. You modify the MTU by setting class and policy maps.
Note |
When you show the interface settings, a default MTU of 1500 is displayed for physical Ethernet interfaces. |
You can configure an MTU size of up to 9216 bytes on management interfaces. The change in configuration might trigger a temporary link flap at the end device.
Debounce Timer Parameters
The debounce timer delays notification of a link change, which can decrease traffic loss due to network reconfiguration. You can configure the debounce timer separately for each Ethernet port and specify the delay time in milliseconds. The delay time can range from 0 milliseconds to 5000 milliseconds. By default, this parameter is set for 100 milliseconds, which results in the debounce timer not running. When this parameter is set to 0 milliseconds, the debounce timer is disabled.
Caution |
Enabling the debounce timer causes the link-down detections to be delayed, which results in a loss of traffic during the debounce period. This situation might affect the convergence and reconvergence of some Layer 2 and Layer 3 protocols. |