Agiver - 2026-08-08

Hi there!

Encountering unicast-flood errors on your network switches when using a test automation framework like STAF (Software Testing Automation Framework) is usually tied to how the framework handles continuous node-to-node communication, heartbeat signals, or heavy data streaming across multiple test machines.

When STAF starts intensive multi-host communication, it often generates a high volume of TCP/IP traffic or rapid ARP requests. If a switch's Content Addressable Memory (CAM) table fills up, or if MAC addresses age out faster than the traffic refreshes, the switch resorts to treating unicast packets as broadcasts (unicast flooding), triggering those warnings in your log.

Here are a few steps to troubleshoot and resolve this:

Check ARP and CAM Timers: Compare your switch's MAC address aging timer with the OS ARP cache timeout on your STAF host machines. If the switch ages out MAC entries too quickly while STAF nodes are momentarily quiet between test suites, the next packet will cause a flood. Adjusting the switch aging timer can often mitigate this.

Review STAF Keep-Alives / Heartbeats: If you have configured frequent polling or event monitoring between machines, tune the intervals to prevent constant, low-level chatter that keeps switch tables churning.

Isolate Test Traffic: Consider placing your STAF automation nodes on a dedicated VLAN. This contains any broadcast/flooding behavior and prevents it from impacting the broader corporate or production network infrastructure.

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Hope this helps narrow down the switch log issue! Let us know if you need help analyzing specific packet captures.