Living with the Chaos protocol

[delaney@xn.ll.mit.edu]

   We're using them on the same subnet without any problems that I know of.  What types of
   problems have people seen with TCP and CHAOS on the same subnet?

       John
   Don Mitchell			dmitchell@trc.amoco.com
   Amoco Production Company	(918) 660-4270
   Tulsa Research Center
   P.O. Box 3385, Tulsa, OK 74102

We were having occasional "broadcast storms" which would slow the
response to users of all our 36XX machines (but not, if I remember
correctly, the TI Explorers) to a crawl. The CPUs appeared to be tied
up fielding ethernet packets. When we moved the LISP machines to a
separate subnet with no forwarding of CHAOS packets out of that
subnet, we stopped having the storms. 

We were never able to explain what was happening or why. We suspected
that some non-Symbolics machine was broadcasting bogus CHAOS-like
packets in response to legitimate CHAOS packets under obscure
circumstances. The circumstances had to be obscure because the storms
did not occur at all for a number of years and then only occured once
a week or so. But they could last all day.

We suspected either a new Solbourne or a MassComp with newly-updated
software of starting the storms but, curiously, disconnecting these
machines from the affected subnet would not stop a storm in progress.

I am sure others out there can add their 2 cents about broadcast
storms. 

John