STP

[sumesh_un]

Cisco Design Guidelines state that network architecture should be such that STP must be avoided -say by limiting VLANs to a closet-to make convergence predictable and bounded.Can somebody elaborate how can this help?

[m.glosson]

If your closet switch is layer-3 capable (3560, 3750, 4500, etc), you can use layer-3 uplinks back to core or distribution switches. This makes all VLANs local and spanning-tree only lives on that switch (or group of switches in that closet). Let your routing protocol, such as EIGRP, worry about keeping you with a loop-free topology.