[c-nsp] Rapid-PVST and RSTP compatibility

[Brandon Ewing]

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 09:42:48AM -0600, Steven Raymond wrote:
> On May 23, 2012, at 9:15 AM, Covalciuc Piotr wrote:
> 
> > We have a network built on CISCO switches with Rapid-PVST.
> > Now, we want to integrate in the network the DELL PowerConnect
> > switches, which supports RSTP only.
> > 
> > Does the Rapid-PVST compatible with RSTP?
> 
> From what I understand, the Ciscos will still run Rapid-PVST, not fall back to "RSTP".  Rapid-PVST will interwork with the Dells' RSTP, however.  On the cisco you can say "spanning-tree mode [ pvst | rapid-pvst | mst ]" without a "plain" RSTP option.  
> 
> PVST & R-PVST has limitations in the total number of vlans you can run, however, I think it is 128.
> 
> You may want to look at running MSTP, which should be somewhat less Cisco proprietary, and the dells will do MSTP as well.  MSTP then overcome the PVST vlan count limits.
> 

The last time I looked at this, mapping vLANS to an MST instance on a
Powerconnect created that vLAN on the switch.  Since we were pre-mapping the
entire 4K vlan range on our Cisco devices, this blew up the first
Powerconnect we tried it on.

Note:  This was 2+ years ago, on a 53xx-class device.

-- 
Brandon Ewing                                        (nicotine at warningg.com)
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