We have a dozen Netgear "Smart" switches, most of whom allow one to turn on STP or Fast Link, and allow one to set a variety of parameters, such as priority, path cost, timeout and delay.
Would turning either one of these on prevent the establishment of loops? Are the default parameters likely to be useful? Can the priority be left at the default on all the switches, or do I need to establish one as the root in some way? What is the downside - there is always a downside! Does STP mean that there would be a delay in establishing a new connection, or that moving a patch cable from one port to another port would create a longer outage? I have heard Radia Perlman lecture on STP, but I haven't made the connection between what she said and the parameters I am asked to set - the vocabulary is different. We have an earlier experience with turning on flow control, that resulted in bad random network bad performance, until we learned the cause, and which makes us hesitant to just turn either on. The switches come with STP disabled, and Fast Link enabled by default. Daniel Feenberg _______________________________________________ bblisa mailing list [email protected] http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa
