WD19 dock kills local network when laptop is turned off?

I am running into this issue and have been able to reproduce it successfully.

I have found that if I turn my Dell Latitude on and let it sit on the bitlocker unlock screen and let it time out, it will (after the screen has turned off) kill my local network after 1 minute. I have a Ubiquity Amplifi HD mesh network and the ethernet cable is plugged into the rear of the router, then to my dock. The issue is not repeatable when the ethernet is plugged directly into the laptop.

When it kills my network, I have to unplug the thunderbolt cable from the laptop and the network connectivity resumes. Talking to a few other IT friends, we are hypothesizing the dock may maybe somehow injecting voltage through the ethernet line when there isn't a successful boot or the like. I plan on splicing into a ethernet cable and checking for erroneous voltages that could be causing it.

Same Problem Here. Brand new docking station with an XPS 15. Docking station is updated with latest firmware.  Everytime my laptop goes to sleep it brings down the rest of my network.  If I unplug the ethernet cable from the docking station or wake up the XPS 15 my network comes back to life. 

Same exact issue. Using WD19 dock with XPS 15 laptop.

I experienced the same problem and contacted Dell who advised me to release the flea power in the dock as follows:

To release flea power, follow these steps:

1 Remove the Dock USB-C / TB cable from the System.
2 Unplug AC power and all peripherals from the Dock.

3 Drain power on the dock by holding the power button for 30 seconds. For Salomon docks, the power button may flash three times.

4 Plug AC power into the Dock before redocking the with the System.
5 Connect peripherals one at a time and test before connecting the next peripheral.

Note: The type C USB connector LED may remain lit despite an error transferring power to the system, contrary to how AC Adapter LED responds to a short, overvoltage, overcurrent or over temperature situation.

The solution resolved the problem after waking from sleep the next time and I am hopeful it will be a permanent fix.

Unfortunately this turned out to be a temporary fix only. After three or four sleeps the problem has recurred and the LAN has been switched off again at the router.

I've been encountering the same issue when working from home and started some digging as it's annoying  and  Dell doesn't seem to be interested in helping here. this is going to be a long one but bear with me. it took even longer to find this out!

Part 1 the facts:

I've got a WD19 and a Latitude 5300 from my employer(means: I can't access the UEFI to test things as only our IT knows the Supervisor password) running Ububuntu

when I shut down the laptop devices in my home LAN start turning  unreachable after a couple of minutes(it doesn't happen immediately which is already part of the puzzle)

this can be fixed in a couple of ways:

1. boot the laptop again, wasting energy when I'm not working
2. pull the Ethernet cable from the dock
3. pull the power cable from the dock
4. power cycle the switch, the dock is connected to

note: in all cases the Ethernet link LED on the dock turns off! this will be important later!

at this point I had a theory so I tested my personal non-work laptop (Thinkpad X13, Ryzen platform) and after connecting and shutting down everything in my LAN  stayed reachable! no problem here!

part 2 the problem?

this is largely speculation on my part as I don't have a managed switch at home that supports port mirroring to prove this:

the dock actually doesn't seem to be the problem as the tests with my non-company Thinkpad showed and here's what I think  happens:

the dock is forwarding Ethernet broadcast and multicast frames through the thunderbolt cable, even when the laptop is off and the Latitude 5300 is looping those frames back causing the dock to send out those looped packets to the switch. and the switch in turn learns the MAC addresses  of those looped packets on the port is connected to and doesn't forward the packets to the corrects ports anymore. when the link of the port the dock is connected to goes down, the switch clears all learned MAC addresses it learned on this port  and everything starts to work again as the switch is re-learning the MAC addresses on the correct ports.

when the problem occurs I can also only see Ethernet broadcast and multicast  frames arriving in tcpdump on my file server which led me to the conclusion that unicast frames, that should arrive at the file server are being forwarded to the port of the  dock instead, rendering the file server unreachable.

I guess my file server is also affected the fastest, because the samba service there sends out Ethernet broadcast/multicast frames(which are being looped back perhaps) pretty regularly

if I'm correct the solution to this would be a firmware update for the Latitude 5300 from Dell that prevents it from looping back ethernet frames from the dock

if I had a managed  switch at home I would configure something Cisco calls port security  on the port the dock uses, restricting it to only one MAC address, but that's only a workaround!

I am on with Pro Support and have seen this topic in multiple communities.  DON'T use the docking station is a pretty silly solution right?   I got the docking station so I don't HAVE to unplug all kinds of junk so it does not spray packets and hose my entire hard wired GIGE network with NAS, computers, servers, WIFI6 etc etc.  They are telling me there is NO reported problem with the WD19S in ALL their records????   Total BS.   ALL of you here and in the other threads are NOT having a problem??? 

I have ALL the latest WD19S drivers and firmware as well for the Latitude Laptop( which can't be the problem because NO device is connected to the WD19S when it goes packet berserk and take down my entire network???    Unplugging the WD19S Ethernet cable - ALL is well and 100%.    I work for Oracle now, worked for Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, and Computer Associates, CISCO. 

This is a 100% hardware, or firmware, or software driver issue.

I have the exact same problem with my Dell WD19TBS dock, with the latest firmware, and two different laptops - a Dell XPS 9710, and a Lenovo T490 - both have latest Windows 11 and BIOS updates. Here's how I have made a stable setup:

I discovered the Windows 11 Realtek GbE Family Controller driver causes the issue with my dock, regardless of which laptop I use. On any laptop, I can use the ethernet on the dock with version 10.48.914.2021 of the Realtek USB GbE Family Controller. If the driver is updated, my network switches are flooded on my LAN, so it's goodnight Vienna for connectivity across all my network devices. I have to disconnect the cable and within seconds, the LAN is working again.

To prevent the 10.48.914.2021 driver from being updated, I created the appropriate registry DeviceInstall restrictions following this guide: Prevent Windows Update from Updating Specific Device Driver | Tutorials (tenforums.com)

Now, Windows 11 is blocked from installing the latest driver when it attempts to download and install the latest driver, e.g., Realtek - Net - 1153.6.418.2022. Windows Update will fail with 0x800f0248.

Finally, I observed the following differences in the settings between the driver versions on my Dell XPS 9710:

Hope this helps someone.

Just encountered this problem with my WD19 dock for the first time yesterday and today. Occurred when my Precision 3551 was sleeping (not shut down!), the next Gigabit switch connected registered a lot of activity and cut out. System running is a current (22.04) Ubuntu Linux.

Does anyone know if this is fixed? I updated the firmware to latest WD19FirmwareUpdateLinux_01.00.14. Still the issue exists on my local network unless I don't use the ethernet on the dock. It seems this is an ongoing issue for two years now. Why isn't Dell addressing this issue?

It's not fixed and I doubt it ever will be. It's a known problem with many USB-C docking stations out there. When your laptop goes to sleep the docking station fires a PAUSE frame out to let the world know it doesn't want any ethernet traffic. Whatever switch is connected to your docking station should just eat that but what happens is cheap switches forward that frame to everyone else effectively asking all devices to PAUSE their communications thus shutting down all your devices connected to the same switch.  Your options are to get an expensive switch to connect to your laptop.. or just unhook the docking station from ethernet (what I finally did).  There's some more info here .. https://jeffq.com/blog/the-ethernet-pause-frame/ and on a number of reddit discussions out there pinning down this problem that's been around for years.

I've red this previously mentioned article Pause frame and decided to change my ten years old switch by a new TP link TL-SG108E. Problem immediately solved!

Hi @Facom , how exactly did that switch help? It is managed and so you can somehow turn off resending of those PAUSE frames?

Have the same issue, already bought new switch as I thought the previous is defective. Unfortunately the new one is not managed as well and did not solve the problem (Netgear GS208). And I don't want to blindly buy another one...

Thank you

Hello Lucky.v,

It is a managed model but there is no need to change any setting. The pause frame is automatically blocked. Important is to connect the docking station directly to the switch. Cost of the switch = €39 here in Belgium. It has also a very low energy consumption which is interesting nowadays with fast return on investment. 

Regards,

facom