ZyXEL Communications 2 Plus Manual Do Utilizador

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Chapter 7 Bridge Screens
ZyWALL 2 Plus User’s Guide
146
7.2  Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
STP detects and breaks network loops and provides backup links between switches, bridges or 
routers. It allows a bridge to interact with other STP-compliant bridges in your network to 
ensure that only one route exists between any two stations on the network.
7.2.1  Rapid STP
The ZyWALL uses IEEE 802.1w RSTP (Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol) that allow faster 
convergence of the spanning tree (while also being backwards compatible with STP-only 
aware bridges). Using RSTP, topology change information does not have to propagate to the 
root bridge and unwanted learned addresses are flushed from the filtering database. In RSTP, 
the port states are Discarding, Learning, and Forwarding.
7.2.2  STP Terminology
The root bridge is the base of the spanning tree.  
Path cost is the cost of transmitting a frame from the root bridge to that port. It is assigned 
according to the speed of the link to which a port is attached. The slower the media, the higher 
the cost - see the next table.
On each bridge, the root port is the port through which this bridge communicates with the root. 
It is the port on this switch with the lowest path cost to the root (the root path cost). If there is 
no root port, then this bridge has been accepted as the root bridge of the spanning tree network.
For each LAN segment, a designated bridge is selected. This bridge has the lowest cost to the 
root among the bridges connected to the LAN. 
7.2.3  How STP Works
After a bridge determines the lowest cost-spanning tree with STP, it enables the root port and 
the ports that are the designated ports for connected LANs, and disables all other ports that 
participate in STP. Network packets are therefore only forwarded between enabled ports, 
eliminating any possible network loops.
STP-aware bridges exchange Bridge Protocol Data Units (BPDUs) periodically. When the 
bridged LAN topology changes, a new spanning tree is constructed.
Table 26   STP Path Costs
LINK 
SPEED
RECOMMENDED 
VALUE
RECOMMENDED 
RANGE
ALLOWED 
RANGE
Path Cost
4Mbps
250
100 to 1000
1 to 65535
Path Cost
10Mbps
100
50 to 600
1 to 65535
Path Cost
16Mbps
62
40 to 400
1 to 65535
Path Cost
100Mbps
19
10 to 60
1 to 65535
Path Cost
1Gbps
4
3 to 10
1 to 65535
Path Cost
10Gbps
2
1 to 5
1 to 65535