I would suggest that the renewed focus on improving this technology stems from the widespread and sometimes confusing opinion that large scale layer 2 networks make sense. Many vendors are rapidly pushing ethernet metro networks that leverage STP for resiliency. Those customers who have implemented such networks at scale are really struggling with the fact that STP really doesn't work well at large scale :) Hence, you can fix the network, or fix the protocol. Fixing the protocol seems less painless to the customer, hence (predominantly) vendors are striving to do so.
I further expect that much of the semi recent push toward rapid convergence in both layer two and layer three stems from the current market condition in the SP space that has left large ILECs as the primary source of revenue as more and more of the xLECs fall by the wayside. Try explaining to telco's that 45 second convergence isn't a bad thing. You're likely going to lose. At 04:09 PM 2/28/2002 -0500, nrf wrote: >Does anybody know exactly how Rapid Spanning Tree works, or have a link that >describes it in detail? What I'm really interested in knowing is the >technical details that make it better than old-school STP, and in >particular, if RSTP is better, then why didn't the original STP designers >make it like RSTP in the first place (not trying to criticize, I'm just >interested in the evolutionary process of protocols)? > >What I find curious is that I searched and while I found that web sites >freely discuss how RSTP is better (or not), or talk about which vendors have >implemented it or not, I haven't found a single site that describes exactly >what RSTP is doing from a technical perspective and why whatever it is doing >is better than STP. Furthermore, I'm not a member of IEEE, so I guess I >can't access the 802.1w doc. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=36904&t=36851 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
