DES-3326S Layer 3 Fast Ethernet Switch User’s Guide
340 Understanding and Troubleshooting the Spanning Tree Protocol
Using layer 3 switches and IP routing eliminates the need for
STP port blocking because the packets are routed by
destination addresses. The link redundancy remains, and
relying on the routing protocols gives a faster convergence than
with STP.
The drawback is that the introduction of layer 3 switching
usually requires a new addressing scheme.