CHAPTER 13: RAPID SPANNING TREE PROTOCOL RAPID SPANNING TREE PROTOCOL
MULTILINK ML1200 MANAGED FIELD SWITCH – INSTRUCTION MANUAL 13–19
• P2P Ports: set the "point-to-point" value to off on all ports that are connected to
shared LAN segments (i.e. connections to hubs). The default value is auto. P2P
ports would typically be end stations or computers on the network.
• Designated Root: MAC Address of the Root Bridge in the tree
• Status: status of STP/RSTP for the port.
The STP or RSTP values can be changed for each port as shown below.
Migration is enabled for all ports connected to other devices such as hubs, bridges and
switches known to support IEEE 802.1d STP services and cannot support RSTP services.
Status is normally enabled - in certain cases the Status can be set to disabled to turn off
RSTP or STP on that port.
13.3.2 Smart RSTP (Ring-Only Mode) with EnerVista Secure Web Management Software
A ring is a special case mesh structure. In many networks, network managers prefer to
create a ring structure for topological redundancy and simplicity. In a ring structure:
1. All switches in the network are GE Multilin switches.
2. RSTP is enabled on all the switches.
3. The topology is a ring.
4. All switches in the ring have been configured to use the ring-only mode (as
shown below).
5. All switches in the ring must use the same firmware revision.
The ring structure can demonstrate fast recovery times, typically faster than what RSTP
can recover from a single fault. In many situations RSTP will recover in seconds, whereas
smart RSTP (Ring-Only mode) will recover in milliseconds.