While our network is now loop free, STP keeps working away. BPDUs are still sent out at 2-second intervals to be sure that things are how they should be. If at any point a bridge doesn’t hear from another bridge, the topology will need to be recalculated. For example, let’s say that bridge B fails. Bridge C will stop receiving BPDUs on its blocked port. Once 20 seconds have passed without receiving a BPDU from Bridge B, Bridge C will:
- First go into a listening state for 15 seconds. During the listening state, a bridge is examining BPDUs sent by other bridges.
- Then go into a learning state for 15 seconds. During this time, the bridge is building the MAC address table for the connected segment. Remember that it was in a blocked state previous to this.
After these stages, Bridge C will become the new designated bridge for segment BC, and will begin forwarding frames. Note that convergence took about 50 seconds to complete – 20 seconds waiting for a BPDU, plus 15 seconds listening and 15 seconds learning. The time during which a switch is listening and learning is referred to as the Forward Delay.
While a number of BPDUs are passed back and forth while a Spanning Tree topology is being calculated, in truth calculating a Spanning Tree topology is really no more than a three-step process:
- Elect the Root Bridge
- Elect a Root Port on each non-Root Bridge
- Elect one Designated Port on each network segment.
Once these steps are completed, a network should be loop free. However, you should also recall that while listening or learning, ports are not forwarding frames. A network is converged once all bridges have switched to a forwarding or blocking state.
