Spanning tree advice

[maark]

Hi,
have approx 25 HP Procurve switches (approx as I have not been here long and not tracked them all down - no network map!).
Spanning tree is enabled only on 3 of them.
Am I ok to enable it on the others or will I destroy the network?
Not too hot on spanning tree details - only know that it can prevent loopback problems.
Any advice gratefully received.
Should be getting Procurve manager soon so I can upgrade firmware as well,
Cheers Mark

[SYNACK]

You should be able to enable it on all of the switches but you should make sure that ports that clients are connected to as set to access-mode/portfast/client ports so that STP does not block them for to long at startup.

STP is a path finding protocol which lets you connect the switches using more than one link. the STP will then elect a master switch and find the best paths of the existing links between the switches. It will also disable the extra links makeing them redundant backup links that wil become live if the primary route is compromised.

The election process is usually quite stupid and can sometimes end up with a far end switch as master which causes stupid paths and a slowdown if you have multiple links that are not bundled. You should manually define the prioroty of your core switch to be high in order for the election to work out well if you are using it in this redundant configuration.

[DMcCoy]

For those edge switches that still use it, I'd make sure they are using RSTP not STP, along with setting the edge ports on the newer switches that use mstp instead. You can make the core switch the highest priority for the querier (I think this is actually by using a lower number iirc). Then you can add a querier for each vlan on the core.

RSTP on the edge really helps to eliminate the usual dhcp/pxe delays when using stp

[Geoff]

Your better off using the 'loop-protect' function for edge ports on ProCurves IMHO. Just use spanning tree for links.

[maark]

Thanks for advice on this - I will wait till I get procourve manager running and know layout of all switches. Will do a bit more research,
Cheers Mark