STP P2P Edge

[Eddie.brown1986]

Hello All,

I have recently added some end devices to my switches on the access ports. The only thing is when I use the Show STP spanning-tree command they are showing up as p2p not p2p edge like they should be. I am using RSTP anyone know of why this could be happening?

I have the end devices hooked into the switch via cat5e connection. The end devices are all running either Server 2008 R2 Standard or Enterprise.

If they are showing up as p2p does STP think that it is another trunk? If so will that not impeed on my preformance.

Thanks in advance

Eddie

[Peter Paluch · Accepted solution]

Hello Eddie,

There is no way of reliably detecting whether a port is connected to an end device (edge port). Therefore, Cisco switches default to non-edge ports, and edge ports have to be explicitly configured using the spanning-tree portfast interface-level command.

There is also a global configuration level command spanning-tree portfast default - I personally recommend using this command as it makes all ports in access mode to be treated like edge ports. This is usually what you want, anyway: access ports usually lead to end devices while inter-switch links are configured as trunks to which this command does not apply. On trunks, RSTP uses its own different mechanisms to achieve rapid convergence.

Best regards,

Peter