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Zac67 ♦
Zac67 ♦
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There is no traceroute tool for layer 2. The main reasons are that there is no TTL mechanism and no feedback mechanism comparable to ICMP for IP.

In addition to the packet capturing suggested by ViperX and mxrx, you can look at the switches' MAC tables to see how far a specific MAC propagates and an actual connection reaches. Any layer 3 connection attempt will ARP and thus propagate the source's MAC address to all switches with a working connection in that segment/VLAN. For me, that's the fastest trouble-shooting method.

There is no traceroute tool for layer 2. The main reasons are that there is no TTL mechanism and no feedback mechanism comparable to ICMP for IP.

In addition to the packet capturing suggested by ViperX and mxrx, you can look at the switches' MAC tables to see how far an actual connection reaches. Any layer 3 connection attempt will propagate the source's MAC address to all switches with a working connection in that segment/VLAN. For me, that's the fastest trouble-shooting method.

There is no traceroute tool for layer 2. The main reasons are that there is no TTL mechanism and no feedback mechanism comparable to ICMP for IP.

In addition to the packet capturing suggested by ViperX and mxrx, you can look at the switches' MAC tables to see how far a specific MAC propagates and an actual connection reaches. Any layer 3 connection attempt will ARP and thus propagate the source's MAC address to all switches with a working connection in that segment/VLAN. For me, that's the fastest trouble-shooting method.

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Zac67 ♦
Zac67 ♦
  • 88.1k
  • 4
  • 73
  • 137

There is no traceroute tool for layer 2. The main reasons are that there is no TTL mechanism and no feedback mechanism comparable to ICMP for IP.

In addition to the packet capturing suggested by ViperX and mxrx, you can look at the switches' MAC tables to see how far an actual connection reaches. Any layer 3 connection attempt will propagate the source's MAC address to all switches with a working connection in that segment/VLAN. For me, that's the fastest trouble-shooting method.