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802.1q trunk and bpdu

sarahr202
Level 5
Level 5

hi every body!A

A switch is connected to another switch by 802.1q trunk.

Does switch send only bpdu belonging to stp instance, native vlan mapped to?

thanks a lot!

2 Accepted Solutions

Accepted Solutions

Istvan_Rabai
Level 7
Level 7

Hi Sarah,

The switch sends bpdus for each vlan that is configured and not pruned from the trunk with the "switchport trunk allowed vlan" command.

Cheers:

Istvan

View solution in original post

Which makes a lot of sense because 3rd party switches do not support PVST so they have a CST (Common Spanning Tree).

Thanks for the info Sarah - rated.

Jon

View solution in original post

18 Replies 18

Istvan_Rabai
Level 7
Level 7

Hi Sarah,

The switch sends bpdus for each vlan that is configured and not pruned from the trunk with the "switchport trunk allowed vlan" command.

Cheers:

Istvan

sarahr202
Level 5
Level 5

i find out the following:

if both switches i.e sw1 and sw2 are cisco switches, then switch will send bpdu for native vlan, bpdu for each vlans

If cisco switch is connected to third party switch, then only bpdu belonging to native vlan is sent.

Thanks a lot !

Which makes a lot of sense because 3rd party switches do not support PVST so they have a CST (Common Spanning Tree).

Thanks for the info Sarah - rated.

Jon

Thanks a lot Jon!

Hi,

I'm afraid this is incorrect.

Cisco switch is not able to detect if the neighbor switch is a Cisco one or a third party one.

Cisco switch will send BPDUs for all VLANs from a trunk port if PVSTP+ configured.

See BPDU Formats section in

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps663/products_tech_note09186a0080094713.shtml#stp

BR,

Milan

Milan

If a cisco switch is connected via an 802.1q trunk to a non-cisco switch it sends an IEEE BPDU on the native vlan, ordinarily vlan 1 and then sends SSTP (Shared Spanning-tree) BPDU's for each other vlan. The non-cisco switch cannot interpret these SSTP BPDU's and merely forwards them.

So strictly speaking you are correct (and rated :) ). What i was trying to get across was that what Sarah was seeing was logical in that she would only see the untagged IEEE BPDU for the native vlan.

Hope i've made sense.

Jon

Hi Jon,

the CCO document says:

"PVST+ interoperates with 802.1Q mono Spanning Tree through the so-called Common Spanning Tree (CST) over an 802.1Q trunk. The CST is always on VLAN 1, so this VLAN needs to be enabled on the trunk to interoperate with other vendors. CST BPDUs are transmitted, always untagged, to the IEEE Standard Bridge-Group (MAC Address 01-80-c2-00-00-00, DSAP 42, SSAP 42). For completeness of description, a parallel set of BPDUs are also transmitted to the Cisco shared Spanning Tree MAC address for VLAN 1."

This leads me to a consequent question:

"What happens, if there is following chain of switches connected by trunks:

Cisco1---ThirdParty---Cisco2

?"

Let's say Cisco1 sends BPDUs on the trunk to the ThirdParty.

ThirdParty receives the IEEE BPDU for VLAN1 (native by default). It understands it, increases the BPDU cost and sends a IEEE BPDU to Cisco2.

But ThirdParty also received a Cisco shared Spanning Tree BPDU for VLAN1.

It doesn't understand it, so simply forwards to Cisco2.

What happens at Cisco2? It received two BPDUs for VLAN1, each with different cost!!

So which one does it choose?

And if we use another VLAN as the native one (or even a different one on each trunk) the question becomes even more complicated :-((

Do you know an answer to my question?

I plan to build a lab "when I have some time" :-)

BR,

Milan

The Cisco bridge always ignore the BPDUs for vlan 1 sent to the SSTP address. Vlan 1 only uses BPDUs sent the the IEEE address.

The SSTP BPDU sent on vlan 1 is mainly used to help detecting native vlan inconsistency as far as I remember.

Regards,

Francois

Hi Francois,

you are right.

100% precise would be saying "native VLAN" instead of "VLAN 1".

I found a document describing in details:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_1t/12_1t3/feature/guide/dtbridge.html#wp1020686

Also this one is helpful:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk389/tk621/technologies_tech_note09186a00801d11a0.shtml

Thanks and best regards,

Milan

Nope, I stand for what I said. The SSTP BPDU for vlan 1 is sent on vlan 1. It will be tagged if vlan 1 is not the native vlan. The IEEE BPDU for vlan 1 is always sent untagged (I don't like the term native vlan, which is a Cisco invention).

Regards,

Francois

Hi Francois,

you are correct.

I think I understand it completely now :-)

What makes me still a little confused is the sentence "The CST BPDU (of VLAN 1, by default) is sent to the IEEE address." I found in

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_1t/12_1t3/feature/guide/dtbridge.html#wp1020686

Does it mean it's possible to use a different VLAN than VLAN1 for CST?

Thanks,

Milan

Hi Milan,

No, it's a default and cannot be configured. Initially, in Cisco's implementation, vlan 1 could not be disabled or even removed from trunks. That's why it was given this special role of being the CST.

Regards,

Francois

Milan

Just to add to Francois post, the link i sent describes this perfectly - see Case 1 and Case 2.

Jon

Milan

Have a look at the PVST+ explained document - about 2/3 of the way down. It covers exactly what happens when cisco switches are connected to non-cisco switches.

http://blog.internetworkexpert.com/category/ccie-routing-switching/bridging-switching/

From the perspective of the non-cisco switch it only really sees the BDPU for the CST, the other BPDU's it doesn't interpret. I think this is what Sarah was getting at :)

Jon

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