From: MADMAN (dave@interprise.com)
Date: Wed Feb 19 2003 - 14:12:18 GMT-3
I think there is a network engineering disease called STPphobia, it's
an irrational fear that STP is unstable, doesn't work and is impossible
at any rate to configure and troubleshoot.
Had a call yesterday, a switched network was very unstable, they
called saying they were having spanning tree problems. Well the problem
was not the STP but the design!!! The network had a diameter of 9,
spanning was working as advertised as it most often does. I could go on
but I think you get the point.
my $.02
Dave
jeff gercken wrote:
> I'm hoping someone can help me understand this. I am a network engineer
> for a gov't facility in Indiana. We have (32) 6509's connected (Gig E)
> in hub fashion to two 6509 core switches w/ MSFC's (each having priority
> of one of two hsrp gateways). There are also around 53 vlans configured
> and statically trunked to various access-layer switches. Our
> utilization is almost nothing with 'sh traffic' indicating a peak of 5%.
>
> Vlans that are only on 1 access-layer switch are not trunked between the
> core switches meaning there are no STP blocked lines. The DHCP server
> assigns the gateways by round-robin.
>
> I wanted to move to a topology using uplinkfast and balancing by STP
> portvlan priorities. My reasoning was as much for monitoring as for
> convergence. Right now I have no idea how the traffic is flowing and
> trying to use a sniffer is about impossible.
>
> I've been overruled by the guys in DC who seem to believe that a STP
> blocked link is just as bad as a loop. None will explain their
> position, just a 'because I said so' answer. They also wouldn't let me
> increase the core capacity using etherchannel. Our Cisco NSA
> Engineer(no, not that NSA) was down pushing AVID so I took the
> opportunity to ask. He took the same position as headquarters but
> really didn't/couldn't explain why.
>
> Does any of this make sense to anyone? Would you please help me to
> understand because it seems to sacrifice a lot just so you can have 2
> gigabit links instead of 1.
>
> I don't mean to clog up the list with this so please reply directly.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Jeff
>
>
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-- David Madland CCIE# 2016 Sr. Network Engineer Qwest Communications 612-664-3367"You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer." --Winston Churchill
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