Virus Throttling (5300xl Switches Only) 
General Configuration Guidelines 
Note  On a given VLAN, to unblock the hosts that have been blocked by the 
connection-rate feature, use the vlan < vid > connection-rate filter unblock 
command. 
10.  Maintain a practice of carefully monitoring the Event Log or configured 
trap receivers for any sign of high connectivity-rate activity that could 
indicate an attack by malicious code. (Refer to 
“Connection-Rate Log and 
Trap Messages” on page 3-31.) 
For a network that appears to be under significant 
attack: 
The steps are similar to the general steps for a network that is relatively attack 
free. The major difference is in policies suggested for managing hosts exhib
-
iting high connection rates. This allows better network performance for 
unaffected hosts and helps to identify hosts that may require updates or 
patches to eliminate malicious code. 
1.  Configure connection-rate filtering to throttle on all ports. 
2.  Set global sensitivity to medium. 
3.  Use clear arp to clear the arp cache. 
4.  If SNMP trap receivers are available in your network, use the snmp-server 
command to configure the switch to send SNMP traps. 
5.  Monitor the Event Log or the available SNMP trap receivers (if configured 
on the switch) to identify hosts exhibiting high connection rates. 
6.  Check any hosts that exhibit relatively high connection rate behavior to 
determine whether malicious code or legitimate use is the cause of the 
behavior. 
7.  On hosts you identify as needing attention to remove malicious behavior: 
•  To immediately halt an attack from a specific host, group of hosts, or 
a subnet, use the per-port block mode on the appropriate port(s). 
•  After gaining control of the situation, you can use connection-rate 
ACLs to more selectively manage traffic to allow receipt of normal 
routed traffic from reliable hosts. 
3-10