1©2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Chapter 2: Spanning Tree
CCNP Enterprise: Core Networking
M. A. DARBAL
2©2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
Spanning Tree Protocol Fundamentals
3©2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
IEEE 802.1D STP Port States
Every port transitions through the following states:
Port States
DescriptionDisabled
The port is in an administratively off position
(that is, shutdown).
Blocking
The port is enabled, but the port is not forwarding any traffic.
Listening
The port has transitioned from a blocking state and can now send or receive only BPDUs.
Learning
The port can modify the MAC address table.
The switch still does not forward any other network traffic besides BPDUs.
Forwarding
The port can forward all network traffic and
can update the MAC address table as
expected.
Broken
The has detected a problem on a port that can
have major effects. The port discards packets as long as the problem continues to exist.
802.1D STP Port Types
The 802.1D STP standard defines the following three port types:
Port Types
DescriptionRoot port (RP)
A network port that connects to the root bridge or an upstream
switch in the spanning-tree topology. There should be only one root
port per VLAN on a switch.
Designated port (DP)
A network port that receives and forwards BPDU frames to other
switches. Designated ports provide connectivity to downstream
devices and switches. There should be only one active designated
port on a link.
Blocking port
A network that is not forwarding traffic because of STP calculations.
4©2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
STP Key Terminology
TermsDescriptionRoot Bridge
The most important switch. All ports are in a
forwarding state and are categorized as designated ports.
Bridge protocol data unit (BPDU)
Used to identify a hierarchy and notify of changes
in the topology. There are two types of BPDUs:
configuration BPDU and topology change notification BPDU.
Configuration BPDU
Used to identify the root bridge, root, designated,
and blocking ports.
Topology change notification (TCN) BPDU
Used to communicate changes in the Layer 2
topology to other switches.
Root path cost
The combined cost for a specific path toward the
root switch.
System priority
This 4-bit value indicates the preference for a switch to be root bridge. The default value is 32,768.
TermsDescriptionSystem ID extension
This 12-bit value indicates the VLAN that the
BPDU
correlates.
Root bridge identifier
This is a combination of the root bridge system MAC address, system ID extension, and system priority of
the root bridge.
Local bridge identifier
This is a combination of the local
switch’s
bridge system MAC address, system ID extension, and
system priority of the root bridge.
Max age
Maximum length of time that passes before a bridge
port saves its BPDU information. The default value is
20 seconds.
Hello time
The time that a BPDU is advertised out of a port.
The default value is 2 seconds, but the value can be
configured to 1 to 10 seconds.
Forward delay
The amount of time that a port stays in a listening
and learning state. The default value is 15 seconds.