Cisco – HP switch ‘mirror port’ makes a Cisco switch port err-disabled due to keepalive loop-back

ciscohp-procurvekeepaliveloopback

I'm trying to connect an HP ProCurve 5304xl switch to a Cisco 2950. The HP port I'm connecting to is described as a 'mirror port', which appears to be like a SPAN port except that it also allows ingress traffic.

What I want is to push the traffic from this 'mirror port' into a RSPAN VLAN on the Cisco so I can sniff the traffic on the HP switch from elsewhere in my network. The problem is that HP returns the keep-alive packet that the Cisco port sends out, so the 2950 thinks there's a network loop:

%ETHCNTR-3-LOOP_BACK_DETECTED: Keepalive packet loop-back detected on FastEthernet0/3.
%PM-4-ERR_DISABLE: loopback error detected on Fa0/3, putting Fa0/3 in err-disable state

Is there any way to disable this keepalive packet on the Cisco? Perhaps by disabling STP somehow on the port that connects to the HP?

Many thanks,
Matt.

Best Answer

Cisco keepalives are separate from STP, and can be disabled ('no keepalive') on a per-interface basis.