[c-nsp] MST Experiences: was Re: Dell switches (specifically PowerConnect 7048P) and Ciscos

[Reuben Farrelly]

On 27/11/2012 9:30 PM, Phil Mayers wrote:
> Normally I'm not a big fan of "proprietary" protocols, but MST is so
> awesomely sucky for Campus environments ("map all your VLANs to
> instances before you start, and never change it" - yeah, right!) that we
> mandate Cisco compatible PVST in all our edge.

Wow.  I thought it was just me and my lack of MST experience that was 
the problem when I've looked at migrating to MST - so it's reassuring to 
know it isn't just me who had had a bad experience with it.  Even 
starting by rolling it out at home on a small 4 switch (two vendor) in a 
ring topology seemed relatively painful.  Most definitely far far more 
pain than gain.  The thought of rolling it out to dozens of switches 
across multiple states just doesn't bear thinking about.

The main thing that has attracted me to look at MST was the widespread 
multivendor support for it.  The vlan-to-spanning-tree mapping concept 
seems good in theory - but as Phil has said you really only get one shot 
at getting it right.

What vendors, other than Cisco, support some form of Rapid-PVST?  I 
believe Arista do on their switches - are there any others?  If it's 
proprietary, did Arista license it from Cisco or...?  It seems so 
patently obvious that PVST would be a smart idea, yet so few vendors 
seem to support it.  What gives?

Reuben