Users Guide
Link Dampening
Interface state changes occur when interfaces are administratively brought up or down or if an interface state changes.
Every time an interface changes a state or aps, routing protocols are notied of the status of the routes that are aected by the change in 
state. These protocols go through the momentous task of re-converging. Flapping; therefore, puts the status of entire network at risk of 
transient loops and black holes.
Link dampening minimizes the risk created by apping by imposing a penalty for each interface ap and decaying the penalty exponentially. 
After the penalty exceeds a certain threshold, the interface is put in an Error-Disabled state and for all practical purposes of routing, the 
interface is deemed to be “down.” After the interface becomes stable and the penalty decays below a certain threshold, the interface 
comes up again and the routing protocols re-converge.
Link dampening:
• reduces processing on the CPUs by reducing excessive interface apping.
• improves network stability by penalizing misbehaving interfaces and redirecting trac.
• improves convergence times and stability throughout the network by isolating failures so that disturbances are not propagated.
Important Points to Remember
• Link dampening is not supported on VLAN interfaces.
• Link dampening is disabled when the interface is congured for port monitoring.
• You can apply link dampening to Layer 2 and Layer 3 interfaces.
• You can congure link dampening on individual interfaces in a LAG.
Enabling Link Dampening
To enable link dampening, use the following command.
• Enable link dampening.
INTERFACE mode
dampening
Examples of the show interfaces dampening Commands
To view the link dampening conguration on an interface, use the show config command.
R1(conf-if-te-1/1/1/1/1)#show config
!
interface TenGigabitEthernet 1/1/1/1
 ip address 10.10.19.1/24
 dampening 1 2 3 4
 no shutdown
To view dampening information on all or specic dampened interfaces, use the show interfaces dampening command from EXEC 
Privilege mode.
Dell#show interfaces dampening
Interface Supp Flaps Penalty Half-Life Reuse Suppress Max-Sup
 State
Te 1/1/1/1 Up 0 0 1 2 3 4
Te 1/1/1/2 Up 0 0 1 2 3 4
Te 1/1/1/3 Up 0 0 1 2 3 4
Dell# 
Interfaces
381










