Storm control prevents traffic on a LAN from being disrupted by a broadcast, multicast, or unicast storm on a port. A LAN storm occurs when packets flood the LAN, creating excessive traffic and degrading network performance. Errors in the protocol-stack implementation, mistakes in network configuration, or users issuing a denial-of-service attack can cause a storm.
Storm control is configured for the switch as a whole but operates on a per-port basis. By default, storm control is disabled.
Storm control uses rising and falling thresholds to block and then restore the forwarding of broadcast, unicast, or multicast packets. You can also set the switch to shut down the port when the rising threshold is reached.