H3C Technologies H3C SecPath F1000-E - Manual (Page 202)

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point-to-point link or an edge port, which directly connects to a user terminal rather than to another
device or a shared LAN segment.
Although RSTP supports rapid network convergence, it has the same drawback as STP does: All bridges
within a LAN share the same spanning tree, so redundant links cannot be blocked based on VLAN, and
the packets of all VLANs are forwarded along the same spanning tree.
Features of MSTP
Developed based on IEEE 802.1s, MSTP overcomes the shortcomings of STP and RSTP. In addition to the
support for rapid network convergence, it also allows data flows of different VLANs to be forwarded
along separate paths, thus providing a better load sharing mechanism for redundant links.
MSTP features the following:
• MSTP supports mapping VLANs to MST instances (MSTIs) by means of a VLAN-to-MSTI mapping
table. MSTP can reduce communication overheads and resource usage by mapping multiple
VLANs to one MSTI.
• MSTP divides a switched network into multiple regions, each containing multiple spanning trees
that are independent of one another.
• MSTP prunes a loop network into a loop-free tree, thus avoiding proliferation and endless cycling of
packets in a loop network. In addition, it provides multiple redundant paths for data forwarding,
thus supporting load balancing of VLAN data.
• MSTP is compatible with STP and RSTP.