In short, the main purpose of activating STP is to prevent looping when you have redundant paths in the network. Without activating STP, redundant topology will cause broadcast storming.

To establish path redundancy, STP creates a tree that spans all of the devices in an extended network, forcing redundant paths into a standby, or blocked, state, but establishing the redundant links as a backup in case the active link should fail. If STP costs change, or if one network segment in the STP becomes unreachable, the spanning tree algorithm reconfigures the spanning tree topology and re-establishes the connection by activating the standby path. Without spanning tree in place, it is possible that more than one connection may be simultaneously live, which could result in an endless loop of traffic on the LAN.

Spanning-Tree Protocol operation is transparent to end stations, which are unaware whether they are connected to a single LAN segment or a switched LAN of multiple segments.

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DeWalt WP54AG manual