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About the Unidirectional Link Detection Parameter
The Cisco-proprietary Unidirectional Link Detection (UDLD) protocol allows ports that are connected through
fiber optics or copper (for example, Category 5 cabling) Ethernet cables to monitor the physical configuration
of the cables and detect when a unidirectional link exists. When the switch detects a unidirectional link, UDLD
shuts down the affected LAN port and alerts the user. Unidirectional links can cause a variety of problems,
including spanning tree topology loops.
UDLD is a Layer 2 protocol that works with the Layer 1 protocols to determine the physical status of a link.
At Layer 1, autonegotiation takes care of physical signaling and fault detection. UDLD performs tasks that
autonegotiation cannot perform, such as detecting the identities of neighbors and shutting down misconnected
LAN ports. When you enable both autonegotiation and UDLD, Layer 1 and Layer 2 detections work together
to prevent physical and logical unidirectional connections and the malfunctioning of other protocols.
A unidirectional link occurs whenever traffic transmitted by the local device over a link is received by the
neighbor but traffic transmitted from the neighbor is not received by the local device. If one of the fiber strands
in a pair is disconnected, as long as autonegotiation is active, the link does not stay up. In this case, the logical
link is undetermined, and UDLD does not take any action. If both fibers are working normally at Layer 1,
then UDLD at Layer 2 determines whether those fibers are connected correctly and whether traffic is flowing
bidirectionally between the correct neighbors. This check cannot be performed by autonegotiation, because
autonegotiation operates at Layer 1.
A Cisco Nexus device periodically transmits UDLD frames to neighbor devices on LAN ports with UDLD
enabled. If the frames are echoed back within a specific time frame and they lack a specific acknowledgment
(echo), the link is flagged as unidirectional and the LAN port is shut down. Devices on both ends of the link
must support UDLD in order for the protocol to successfully identify and disable unidirectional links.
By default, UDLD is locally disabled on copper LAN ports to avoid sending unnecessary control traffic
on this type of media.
Note
The following figure shows an example of a unidirectional link condition. Device B successfully receives
traffic from Device A on the port. However, Device A does not receive traffic from Device B on the same
port. UDLD detects the problem and disables the port.
Figure 1: Unidirectional Link
Default UDLD Configuration
The following table shows the default UDLD configuration.
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series NX-OS Interfaces Configuration Guide, Release 5.2(1)N1(1)
78-26881-OL 5
Configuring Layer 2 Interfaces
About the Unidirectional Link Detection Parameter