ZyXEL Communications MES3500-24 User Manual

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 Chapter 13 Spanning Tree Protocol
MES3500-24/24F User’s Guide
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13.1.5.1  MSTP Network Example
The following figure shows a network example where two VLANs are configured on the two 
switches. If the switches are using STP or RSTP, the link for VLAN 2 will be blocked as STP and RSTP 
allow only one link in the network and block the redundant link. 
Figure 53   
STP/RSTP Network Example 
With MSTP, VLANs 1 and 2 are mapped to different spanning trees in the network. Thus traffic from 
the two VLANs travel on different paths. The following figure shows the network example using 
MSTP. 
Figure 54   
MSTP Network Example 
13.1.5.2  MST Region 
An MST region is a logical grouping of multiple network devices that appears as a single device to 
the rest of the network. Each MSTP-enabled device can only belong to one MST region. When 
BPDUs enter an MST region, external path cost (of paths outside this region) is increased by one. 
Internal path cost (of paths within this region) is increased by one when BPDUs traverse the region. 
A
B
VLAN 1
VLAN 2
A
B
VLAN 1
VLAN 2