How Stp Works; Stp Port States - ZyXEL Communications NWA-1100 Manual

Chapter 11 IP Screen
Path cost is the cost of transmitting a frame onto a LAN through 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 following table.
Table 35 STP Path Costs
Path Cost
Path Cost
Path Cost
Path Cost
Path Cost
Path Cost
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.

11.5.2.3 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.
Once a stable network topology has been established, all bridges listen for Hello BPDUs (Bridge
Protocol Data Units) transmitted from the root bridge. If a bridge does not get a Hello BPDU after a
predefined interval (Max Age), the bridge assumes that the link to the root bridge is down. This
bridge then initiates negotiations with other bridges to reconfigure the network to re-establish a
valid network topology.

11.5.2.4 STP Port States

STP assigns five port states (see next table) to eliminate packet looping. A bridge port is not
allowed to go directly from blocking state to forwarding state so as to eliminate transient loops.
Table 36 STP Port States
PORT STATES
Disabled
Blocking
Listening
Learning
Forwarding
108
RECOMMENDED
LINK SPEED
VALUE
4Mbps 250
10Mbps 100
16Mbps 62
100Mbps 19
1Gbps 4
10Gbps 2
DESCRIPTIONS
STP is disabled (default).
Only configuration and management BPDUs are received and processed.
All BPDUs are received and processed.
All BPDUs are received and processed. Information frames are submitted to the
learning process but not forwarded.
All BPDUs are received and processed. All information frames are received and
forwarded.
RECOMMENDED ALLOWED
RANGE RANGE
100 to 1000 1 to 65535
50 to 600 1 to 65535
40 to 400 1 to 65535
10 to 60 1 to 65535
3 to 10 1 to 65535
1 to 5 1 to 65535
NWA1100-N User's Guide