rstpd

Langue: en

Version: 385531 (fedora - 01/12/10)

Section: 8 (Commandes administrateur)

NAME

rstpd - Daemon implementing Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol for Linux bridges.

SYNOPSIS

rstpd [-d] [-v <level>]

DESCRIPTION

rstpd implements the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) on Linux bridges. When started, it merely monitors the ethernet bridges on the machine until instructed to run RSTP on any of them using rstpctl. When run with the -d option, it runs in the foreground and outputs messages which are normally logged through syslog to standard output and standard error. With the -v option, the level of verbosity of the logs can be controlled. See rstpctl(8) for more information on configuring RSTP.

SPANNING TREE PROTOCOL

Multiple ethernet bridges can work together to create even larger networks of ethernets using the IEEE 802.1d spanning tree protocol. This protocol is used for finding the shortest path between two ethernets, and for eliminating loops from the topology. As this protocol is a standard, linux bridges will interwork properly with other third party bridge products. Bridges communicate with eachother by sending and receiving BPDUs (Bridge Protocol Data Units). These BPDUs can be recognised by an ethernet destination address of 01:80:c2:00:00:00.

The spanning tree protocol can also be turned off (for those situations where it just doesn't make sense, for example when this linux box is the only bridge on the LAN, or when you know that there are no loops in the topology.)

The 2004 version of the 802.1D specification describes the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol, which supercedes the older Spanning Tree Protocol while providing for backward compatible operation with it. It provides for faster reconfiguration during network changes than STP in many cases.

NOTES

TODO: Indicate lack of persistence of configuration across restarts of daemon.

SEE ALSO

rstpctl(8), brctl(8) This manual page Copyright (c) 2006 EMC Corporation.

This manual page is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. It comes with NO WARRANTY.

AUTHOR

Srinivas Aji <Aji_Srinivas@emc.com>