Cisco Systems 3750E Port Role Naming Change, Interoperation Between Legacy and Standard Switches

Chapter 19 Configuring MSTP

Understanding MSTP

Port Role Naming Change

The boundary role is no longer in the final MST standard, but this boundary concept is maintained in Cisco’s implementation. However, an MST instance port at a boundary of the region might not follow the state of the corresponding CIST port. Two cases exist now:

•The boundary port is the root port of the CIST regional root—When the CIST instance port is proposed and is in sync, it can send back an agreement and move to the forwarding state only after all the corresponding MSTI ports are in sync (and thus forwarding). The MSTI ports now have a special master role.

•The boundary port is not the root port of the CIST regional root—The MSTI ports follow the state and role of the CIST port. The standard provides less information, and it might be difficult to understand why an MSTI port can be alternately blocking when it receives no BPDUs (MRecords). In this case, although the boundary role no longer exists, the show commands identify a port as boundary in the type column of the output.

Interoperation Between Legacy and Standard Switches

Because automatic detection of prestandard switches can fail, you can use an interface configuration command to identify prestandard ports. A region cannot be formed between a standard and a prestandard switch, but they can interoperate by using the CIST. Only the capability of load-balancing over different instances is lost in that particular case. The CLI displays different flags depending on the port configuration when a port receives prestandard BPDUs. A syslog message also appears the first time a switch receives a prestandard BPDU on a port that has not been configured for prestandard BPDU transmission.

Figure 19-2illustrates this scenario. Assume that A is a standard switch and B a prestandard switch, both configured to be in the same region. A is the root switch for the CIST, and thus B has a root port (BX) on segment X and an alternate port (BY) on segment Y. If segment Y flaps, and the port on BY becomes the alternate before sending out a single prestandard BPDU, AY cannot detect that a prestandard switch is connected to Y and continues to send standard BPDUs. The port BY is thus fixed in a boundary, and no load-balancing is possible between A and B. The same problem exists on segment X, but B might transmit topology changes.

Figure 19-2 Standard and Prestandard Switch Interoperation

Segment X	MST
	Region

Switch A

Switch B

Segment Y

92721

Note We recommend that you minimize the interaction between standard and prestandard MST implementations.

Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Switch Software Configuration Guide

OL-9775-02 19-7