The Cisco-proprietary UDLD protocol allows the devices connected through fiber optic or copper (for example, Category 5 cabling) Ethernet cables that are connected to the LAN ports to monitor the physical configuration of the cables and detect whether a unidirectional link exists. When a unidirectional link is detected, the UDLD shuts down the affected LAN port and alerts the corresponding user, because unidirectional links 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. In Layer 1, auto negotiation takes care of physical signaling and fault detection. UDLD performs tasks that auto negotiation cannot perform, such as detecting the identities of neighbors and shutting down misconnected LAN ports. When you enable both auto negotiation and UDLD, the 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 the traffic transmitted by a local device over a link is received by a 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, the link does not stay up as long as the auto negotiation is active. In such a scenario, the logical link is undetermined, and the UDLD does not take any action. If both the fibers are working normally in Layer 1, the UDLD in Layer 2 determines whether those fibers are connected correctly and whether the traffic is flowing bidirectionally between the correct neighbors. This check cannot be performed by auto negotiation because auto negotiation operates in Layer 1.

The router periodically transmits the UDLD packets to the neighbor devices on LAN ports where UDLD is enabled. If the packets are echoed back within a specific timeframe and they are lacking 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 for the protocol to successfully identify and disable the unidirectional links.

UDLD detects and disables unidirectional links on Ethernet fiber and copper interfaces due to miswiring or malfunctioning of the interfaces.

Note	UDLD is disabled by default on all ports to avoid sending unnecessary traffic.

To configure fibre-optic interfaces, enable the udld command at the global level. For copper interfaces, enable the udld port command at the interface level.

The figure displays the UDLD mechanism.

UDLD supports two modes of operation: normal (the default) and aggressive. In normal mode, UDLD can detect unidirectional links due to misconnected interfaces on fiber-optic connections. In aggressive mode, UDLD can also detect unidirectional links due to one-way traffic on fiber-optic and twisted-pair links and to misconnected interfaces on fiber-optic links.

UDLD performs the following functions

• Sends a probe packet on every active interface on which UDLD is configured to keep each device informed about its neighbors.

• Learns about the neighbors and keeps the updated neighbor information in a cache table

• Sends several echo messages whenever it detects a new neighbor sending UDLD packets or whenever a neighbor requests a resynchronization of the caches

• Shuts down the affected port and notifies the user when one-way connection is detected. Devices on both ends of the link must support UDLD in order for the protocol to successfully identify and disable unidirectional links

• Reestablishes the connection with the neighbor when a port on a bidirectional link stops receiving UDLD packets if aggressive mode is enabled. After eight failed retries, the port goes into disabled state

UDLD operates by using two mechanisms:

Neighbor database maintenance

UDLD learns about other UDLD-capable neighbors by periodically sending a hello packet (also called an advertisement or probe) on every active interface to keep each device informed about its neighbors. When the switch receives a hello message, it caches the information until the age time (hold time or time-to-live) expires. If the switch receives a new hello message before an older cache entry ages, the switch replaces the older entry with the new one. Whenever an interface is disabled and UDLD is running, whenever UDLD is disabled on an interface, or whenever the switch is reset, UDLD clears all existing cache entries for the interfaces affected by the configuration change. UDLD sends at least one message to inform the neighbors to flush the part of their caches affected by the status change. The message is intended to keep the caches synchronized.

Event-driven detection and echoing

UDLD relies on echoing as its detection mechanism. Whenever a UDLD device learns about a new neighbor or receives a resynchronization request from an out-of-sync neighbor, it restarts the detection window on its side of the connection and sends echo messages in reply. Because this behavior is the same on all UDLD neighbors, the sender of the echoes expects to receive an echo in reply. If the detection window ends and no valid reply message is received, the link might shut down, depending on the UDLD mode. When UDLD is in normal mode, the link might be considered undetermined and might not be shut down. When UDLD is in aggressive mode, the link is considered unidirectional, and the interface is shut down. If UDLD in normal mode is in the advertisement or in the detection phase and all the neighbor cache entries are aged out, UDLD restarts the link-up sequence to resynchronize with any potentially out-of-sync neighbors. If you enable aggressive mode when all the neighbors of a port have aged out either in the advertisement or in the detection phase, UDLD restarts the link-up sequence to resynchronize with any potentially out-of-sync neighbor. UDLD shuts down the port if, after the fast train of messages, the link state is still undetermined.