Compatibility with Ethertype 0x05ff

[n3tw0rkguy83]

Hi All,

I'm not sure if this is the right venue. But hopefully someone can help me.

How will I know if my catalyst and Nexus switch supports Ethertype 0x05ff. This is for the beacon probes sent out by our ESX Servers.

We will be using Nexus 3048 and we have 3750 catalyst switches as our distro switches.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Net

[paolo bevilacqua]

Switches don't really care for ethertypes, unless they have to do something special with the type, and in this case they  should not.

[n3tw0rkguy83]

based on this link http://www.slepicka.net/?p=59 , it says something about the nexus (although a different model than ours), is operating in a cut-through mode. Although it doesn't drop the packet, the guy observed that the switch

"stamps the bad packet by overwriting whatever hasn’t been sent yet" and eventually get discarded by the downstream device after realizing the packet received from the nexus is a corrupted packet.

what i wan't to verify is if the ethertype 0x05ff which is sent out by ESX would get discarded or not, since that ethertype as mentioned on the article is an invalid one.

[paolo bevilacqua]

There is no such thing as invalid ethertype.