On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 03:33:56PM -0700, Owen DeLong wrote:
Switches that support STP?
Yes, "soho" or "desktop" switches I mean. Apparently Netgear GS105's do not do STP at all, at least they don't claim to.
There are switches that have STP protection such that they are portfast until they see an inbound BPDU and then revert to spanning tree on that port (it blocks, listens, learns, then forwards if appropriate).
Do the ports so configured also send BPDUs such that a loop on a "desktop" switch uplinked to that port will cause the port to see its own BPDUs and revert to STP Blocking? Even if that is the case, I think the detection of BPDU and subsequent transition to Blocking will happen too slowly. By then the damage is already done upstream in the collapsed L2/L3 core.