System information

Troubleshooting AppleTalk 9-197

AppleTalk: Old Zone Names Appear in Chooser (Phantom Zones)

Symptom: Old AppleTalk zone names continue to appear in the Chooser. Even after zone names are

removed from the conﬁguration, “phantom” zones continue to appear in the Chooser.

Table 9-7 outlines the problems that might cause this symptom and describes solutions to those

problems.

Table 9-7 AppleTalk: Old Zone Names Appear in Chooser (Phantom Zones)

ZIP storm

Step 1 Use the show appletalk trafﬁc command to check the ﬁeld showing the

number of ZIP requests:

Router#sh apple trafﬁc

[...]

ZIP: 44 received, 35 sent, 6 netinfo

[...]

Router#

Compare this output with the output shown by the command 30 seconds later.

Step 2 If the trafﬁc counters for ZIP requests are incrementing very rapidly (by more

than 10 every 30 seconds) a ZIP storm is probably occurring.

Use the debug apple zip privileged exec command to identify the network for

which the zone is being requested by neighboring routers. You can also use the

show apple private exec command to check the number of pending ZIP

requests.

Step 3 Identify the router that injected the network number into the internetwork (and

that is causing the excessive ZIP trafﬁc). The show appletalk trafﬁc and

show appletalk route exec commands provide information that can help you

ﬁnd the suspect router.

For example, you can use the show appletalk route exec command to view the

AppleTalk routing table. Check whether a network shows up in the routing

table, even though the display indicates that no zone is set.

If you ﬁnd a network for which no zone is set, a node on that network is

probably not responding to ZIP requests, resulting in the ZIP storm.

Step 4 Determine why the node is not responding to ZIP requests. Access lists or other

ﬁlters might be the cause.

ZIP storms can also result from a defect in the software running on the node.

Contact the vendor to determine whether there is a known problem.

Possible Problems Solution