[c-nsp] REP

[Eric Van Tol]

I'm looking at REP for use in a metro ethernet environment and am looking for some real world opinions on its effectiveness.  The available white paper and documentation aren't 100% clear to me that STP can be disabled completely, or whether it should still run in addition to REP.  My preference is to remove STP from any switch in our network, then burn it, spread its ashes in a field, let cattle graze on the grass, then burn the cattle and shoot their remains into space on a collision course with the sun.  Apologies to animal rights activists, but this should give you an idea of how I really feel about Spanning Tree Protocol.

Can anyone share any experiences they've had using REP?  We primarily use ME3400s in a ring topology with each end of the ring terminating in a pair of 6509s.  The 6509s, however, will be repurposed over the next few months as we replace them with an alternate vendor's equipment.  Not sure if this matters, but figured I'd mention it.  Right now, we use strictly layer 3 on all links between nodes on a ring, preventing us from taking advantage of the more advanced layer 2 and vrf-lite features of the ME3400s.  This probably poor design decision was made due to previously perceived limitations with REP some years ago.

Thanks in advance,
evt