Latency on LAN Switches

[itsupport.hcfs]

For a while now I've noticed packet latency between switches when pinging them from different host(s) inside the network.  I have 3 SG 300-52 port Gigabit Managed Switches.  The latency is not overly bad but noticeable enough to where I want to try and resolve it soon.  Network topology goes Desktop>Switch>Webfilter(Untangle)>Firewall(ASA5510)>Internet.  Spanning tree is disabled on all 3 switches.  BPDU is set for Flooding on all 3 switches.  The setup is fairly straight forward, no other special configurations to speak of, all other switch settings would be set to default. 

Any help with troubleshooting is greatly appreciated. 

Screen shot of pings to each switch have been attached.

Switch01 Firmware: 1.1.2.0

Switch02 Firmware: 1.0.0.27

Switch03 Firmware: 1.4.1.3

[chrihussey]

Not quite sure you have an issue. The switches treat the pings as low priority packets and to see this occasional latency could be normal behavior. The majority of packets show no latency. A truer test would be to ping workstation to workstation.

I haven't used the SG 300 switches and it's not clear how you have them connected, but disabling spanning tree doesn't sound like a good idea, especially if you have redundant links of any kind.

[itsupport.hcfs]

Thank you for the reply.  I do have 2 lag groups set up on switch01. 2 ports connect to switch02 lag group and two connect to switch03 lag group.  I was informed to disable spanning tree as to prevent causing a loop back in the network and bringing it down.  I would be hesitant on enabling it now.  I did try the test and ping one workstation to another and the test all shows about <1ms.  

[chrihussey]

Good to hear about the workstation testing.

The main purpose of spanning tree is to prevent a loop in the network. I did some quick reading on the SG 300 and spanning tree treats the LAG group as a single interface as it should.

If your network topology is just switch 2 to switch 1, switch 3 to switch 1 with just the LAG groups and no other connections or links between switches 2 & 3 then you should be OK. However, if you ever connect 2 to 3 for redundancy or add another link outside of the LAG and introduces a loop, you'll need spanning tree enabled.

Regards