Cisco LAN Switching

Chapter 7. Advanced Spanning Tree

The authors would like to thank Radia Perlman for graciously contributing her time to review the material in this chapter.

This chapter covers the following key topics:

• Typical Campus Design: A Baseline Network—Introduces a baseline network for use throughout most of the chapter.

• STP Behavior in the Baseline Network: A Spanning Tree Review—Reviews the concepts introduced in Chapter 6, “Understanding Spanning Tree,” while also introducing some advanced STP theory.

• Spanning Tree Load Balancing—Master this potentially confusing and poorly documented feature that can double available bandwidth for free. Four Spanning Tree load balancing techniques are discussed in detail.

• Fast STP Convergence—Seven techniques ...