White Paper Issue: October 2006 Integration of BX600 SB9 Switches in Cisco NetworksPage 12 / 47

therefore important that one native VLAN is defined at both VLAN trunks. Cisco recommends that this native VLAN should be the same for both trunks to the SB9.

If the Po1 link or switch A itself fails, the SB9 will change the role of Po2 to “designated” and its state to “forwarding”, after going through the state “learning”. According to the standard this will lead to a failover time of approximately twice the forward delay, which in normal cases will be about 30 seconds. Depending of the size of the network this time can be reduced by tuning the STP timers, but this must be done very carefully in order to provide a stable network. Please refer the standard 802.1D or Cisco’s recommendations for timer tuning.

When the SB9 is running 802.1D it supports features such as Cisco’s proprietary port-fast when the “spanning-tree edgeport” command is applied. This means that an access port will take on the state “forwarding” and will omit the states “listening” and “learning”. This is needed when PXE boot mechanisms are used.

Running PVST+ on VLAN Trunks while disabling STP at the SB9

When STP is disabled at the SB9 it bridges the BDPUs without any modifications. Figure 4 shows this scenario.

Cisco A

priority 0 for all vlans

Designated port

forwarding Po1

Po1

SB9

STP disabled

Designated port

Root port

 

forwarding

 

forwarding

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Po3

 

 

Po3

 

 

 

 

 

 

Po2

Po2

Cisco B

priority 4096 for all vlans

Alternate

discarding

On all trunks:

VLAN 1 native

VLAN 10 tagged

VLAN 20 tagged

Figure 4 : PVST+ while STP is disabled at SB9

Since switch B receives the BPDUs of switch A, its port Po2 will get the role “alternate” and it will take on the state “discarding”. The SB9 will not be involved in any decisions while the topology is changing.

If the link Po1 fails, switch B will not receive any BPDUs at Po2. After three times the “hello” interval, Po2 will initiate its change to the role “designated” and will subsequently take on the “forwarding” state. Since no STP is enabled at the SB9, all the switch’s ports will be enabled and forwarding as soon as they come up.

Without STP timer tuning, worst-case failover times resulting from link or switch failures were found to be approximately 45 seconds.

Page 12
Image 12
Fujitsu BX600 SB9 manual Running PVST+ on Vlan Trunks while disabling STP at the SB9