Implementing Cisco Networking Solutions

Rate limiting and storm control

Each user connects to the network on an access port. Given the modern-day switches, the access ports are generally Gigabit Ethernet ports that can pump a lot of traffic on the network. If an attacker starts attacking the network at 1 Gbps of traffic, that can overwhelm the servers. Rate limiting is the easiest way to control the maximum amount of traffic a user can inject on a given port. This limit is without any regard to the type of traffic and all traffic put together is limited to the limit as specified in the rate limiter configuration.

Another way to control the traffic behavior is by using the storm control feature. Using this feature, the traffic can be selectively dropped based on unicast, multicast, ...