Question : Problem: STP, VTP, Cisco switches, Axeon industrial switches

Experts,

I'm looking into enabling STP on my network. I have a 'loop' of PTP links, with a industrial/extreme temp switch at each location. The core is cisco, with a 4503. The number of VLANs will continue to increase, so I'd like to use VTP-except that the Axeon switches don't support it. There are, currently, five points in the loop, each point having two PTP antennas/radios, and each point having one of the non-cisco switches.

Ideally, I'd like to get cisco switches at each point, use VTP with the server being the 4503, create another VLAN for the switches and PTP radios, and enable STP on only that VLAN (the switches also connect to radios on a mesh network). Any recomendations/considerations on this design?

Realistically, I won't be able to replace the Axeon switches with Cisco switches in the near future, and am looking for alternatives, to accomplish this redundancy.

Many Thanks!

Answer : Problem: STP, VTP, Cisco switches, Axeon industrial switches

when you say you have a "loop" or point to point links. Are these point to point link routed links? Like, point to point between sites and you have a router in between? sorry when I hear point to point i think of WAN.

STP is only for switching. So if your redundancy is at layer 3. STP wont really matter.

If you have any redundancy in your switching, I would defiantly recommend that you turn on STP. Just make sure you that understand exactly how it works and how it elects its root switch and that you make sure it elects the fastest switch in the redundancy (your core switch normally) as the root. Otherwise you could be sending all your core traffic to an edge switch and possibly over work that switch.


On VTP, its nice to have, but only really gives you administrative advantages. If you cant get all cisco gear to make this work, you can just do what it does manually with other brand gear.