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Local Area Networks: The Spanning Tree Protocol and Virtual LANs

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Exercises

1. Consider the switched network shown in Fig. 1. What is the spanning tree that will be computed by 802.1d in this network assuming that all links have a unit cost ? Indicate the state of each port.

Fig. 1. A small network composed of Ethernet switches

2. Consider the switched network shown in Fig. 1. In this network, assume that the LAN between switches S3 and S12 fails. How should the switches update their port/address tables after the link failure ?

3. Consider the switched network shown in the figure below. Compute the Spanning Tree of this network.

   

4. Many enterprise networks are organized with a set of backbone devices interconnected by using a full mesh of links as shown in Fig.2. In this network, what are the benefits and drawbacks of using Ethernet switches and IP routers running OSPF ?

Fig. 2. A typical enterprise backbone network

5. In the network depicted in Fig. 3, the host H0 performs a traceroute toward its peer H1 (designated by its name) through a network composed of switches and routers. Explain precisely the frames, packets, and segments exchanged since the network was turned on. You may assign addresses if you need to.

Fig. 3. Host H0 performs a traceroute towards its peer H1 through a network composed of switches and routers

6. In the network represented in Fig. 4, can the host H0 communicate with H1 and vice-versa? Explain. Add whatever you need in the network to allow them to communicate.

Fig. 4. Can H0 and H1 communicate ?

7. Consider the network depicted in Fig. 5. Both of the hosts H0 and H1 have two interfaces: one connected to the switch S0 and the other one to the switch S1. Will the link between S0 and S1 ever be used? If so, under which assumptions? Provide a comprehensive answer.

Fig. 5. Will the link between S0 and S1 ever be used?

8. Most commercial Ethernet switches are able to run the Spanning tree protocol independently on each VLAN. What are the benefits of using per-VLAN spanning trees ?

Testing the Spanning Tree with IPMininet

IPMininet can also be used to configure the Spanning Tree protocol on Linux hosts that act as Ethernet switches. Let us consider the simple Ethernet network shown in the figure below.

A simple Ethernet network

This network can be launched with the IPMininet script shown below. The entire script is available from /exercises/ipmininet_scripts/stp.py.

import shlex
from ipmininet.iptopo import IPTopo

from ipmininet.ipnet import IPNet
from ipmininet.cli import IPCLI


class MyTopology(IPTopo):

    def build(self, *args, **kwargs):

        # Switches with manually set STP priority
        s3 = self.addSwitch("s3", prio=3, lo_addresses=["2001:1::4/64"])
        s4 = self.addSwitch("s4", prio=4, lo_addresses=["2001:1::4/64"])
        s6 = self.addSwitch("s6", prio=6, lo_addresses=["2001:1::6/64"])
        s7 = self.addSwitch("s7", prio=7, lo_addresses=["2001:1::7/64"])
        s9 = self.addSwitch("s9", prio=9, lo_addresses=["2001:1::9/64"])

        # Hub
        # hub1 = self.addHub("hub1")

        # Links
        self.addLink(s3, s9, stp_cost=1)  # Cost changed for both interfaces
        l37 = self.addLink(s3, s7)
        l37[s3].addParams(stp_cost=1) # cost changed for s3->s7
        l37[s7].addParams(stp_cost=1) # cost changed for s7->s3
        self.addLink(s9, s7) # default cost of 1
        self.addLink(s6, s9)
        self.addLink(s6, s4)
        self.addLink(s7, s4)

        super(MyTopology, self).build(*args, **kwargs)

    def post_build(self, net):
        for s in self.switches():
            command="/usr/sbin/tcpdump -i any --immediate-mode -c 50 -w ./stp-"+s+"-trace.pcap stp"
            p = net[s].popen(shlex.split(command))

        super(MyTopology, self).post_build(net)


 net = IPNet(topo=MyTopology())
 try:
     net.start()
     IPCLI(net)
 finally:
     net.stop()

The addSwitch method creates an Ethernet switch. It assigns a random MAC address to each switch and we can configure it with a priority that is used in the high order bits of the switch identifier. We add one IP address to each switch so that we can connect to them on mininet. In practice, IPMininet configures the brtcl(8) software that implements the Spanning Tree protocol on Linux. We can then create the links, configure their cost if required and launch tcpdump to capture the Ethernet frames that contain the messages of the Spanning Tree protocol.

The network contains five nodes and six links.

mininet> nodes
available nodes are:
s3 s4 s6 s7 s9
mininet> links
s3-eth2<->s7-eth1 (OK OK)
s3-eth1<->s9-eth1 (OK OK)
s6-eth2<->s4-eth1 (OK OK)
s6-eth1<->s9-eth3 (OK OK)
s7-eth3<->s4-eth2 (OK OK)
s9-eth2<->s7-eth2 (OK OK)

By using brtcl(8), we can easily observe the state of the Spanning Tree protocol on the different switches. Let us start with s3, i.e. the root of the Spanning Tree.

mininet> s3 brctl showstp s3
s3
  bridge id          0003.f63545ab5f79
  designated root    0003.f63545ab5f79
  root port             0                    path cost                  0
  max age              20.00                 bridge max age            20.00
  hello time            2.00                 bridge hello time          2.00
  forward delay                15.00                 bridge forward delay      15.00
  ageing time                 300.00
  hello timer                   1.03                 tcn timer                  0.00
  topology change timer         0.00                 gc timer                  77.90
  flags


s3-eth1 (1)
  port id            8001                    state                forwarding
  designated root    0003.f63545ab5f79       path cost                  1
  designated bridge  0003.f63545ab5f79       message age timer          0.00
  designated port    8001                    forward delay timer        0.00
  designated cost       0                    hold timer                 0.02
  flags

s3-eth2 (2)
  port id            8002                    state                forwarding
  designated root    0003.f63545ab5f79       path cost                  1
  designated bridge  0003.f63545ab5f79       message age timer          0.00
  designated port    8002                    forward delay timer        0.00
  designated cost       0                    hold timer                 0.02
  flags

The first part of the output of the brctl(8) command shows the state of the Spanning Tree software on the switch. The identifier of this switch is 0003.f63545ab5f79 and the root switch is itself. There is no root port on this switch since it is the root. The path cost is the cost of the path to reach the root switch, i.e. 0 on the root. Then the switch reports the different timers.

The second part of the output provides the state of each switch port. Port s3-eth1 is active and forwards data frames (state is set to forwarding). This port is a designated port. The cost of 1 is the cost associated to this interface. The same information is found for port s3-eth2.

The state of switch s9 is different. The output of brctl(8) indicates that the root identifier is 0003.f63545ab5f79 which is at a distance of 1 from switch s9. The root port on s9 is port 1, i.e. s9-eth1. Two of the ports of this switch forward data packets, the root port and the s9-eth3 which is a designated port. The s9-eth2 port is a blocked port.

mininet> s9 brctl showstp s9
s9
  bridge id          0009.7ecc45e18e5b
  designated root    0003.f63545ab5f79
  root port             1                    path cost                  1
  max age              20.00                 bridge max age            20.00
  hello time            2.00                 bridge hello time          2.00
  forward delay                15.00                 bridge forward delay      15.00
  ageing time                 300.00
  hello timer                   0.00                 tcn timer                  0.00
  topology change timer         0.00                 gc timer                 167.22
  flags


s9-eth1 (1)
  port id            8001                    state                forwarding
  designated root    0003.f63545ab5f79       path cost                  1
  designated bridge  0003.f63545ab5f79       message age timer         20.00
  designated port    8001                    forward delay timer        0.00
  designated cost       0                    hold timer                 0.00
  flags

s9-eth2 (2)
  port id            8002                    state                  blocking
  designated root    0003.f63545ab5f79       path cost                  1
  designated bridge  0007.2a6f5ef34984       message age timer         19.98
  designated port    8002                    forward delay timer        0.00
  designated cost       1                    hold timer                 0.00
  flags

s9-eth3 (3)
  port id            8003                    state                forwarding
  designated root    0003.f63545ab5f79       path cost                  1
  designated bridge  0009.7ecc45e18e5b       message age timer          0.00
  designated port    8003                    forward delay timer        0.00
  designated cost       1                    hold timer                 0.97
  flags

brctl(8) also maintains a MAC address table that contains the Ethernet addresses that have been learned on each switch port.

mininet> s9 brctl showmacs s9
port no      mac addr                is local?       ageing timer
1    2a:6f:5e:f3:49:84       no               257.92
1    62:60:d3:46:2f:12       no               257.92
3    7e:cc:45:e1:8e:5b       yes                0.00
3    7e:cc:45:e1:8e:5b       yes                0.00
2    a2:07:cb:02:90:4a       yes                0.00
2    a2:07:cb:02:90:4a       yes                0.00
1    d6:a1:b4:c8:de:72       yes                0.00
1    d6:a1:b4:c8:de:72       yes                0.00
1    f6:35:45:ab:5f:79       no                 0.45

Thanks to the traces collected by tcpdump, we can easily analyze the messages exchanged by the switches. Here is the fist message sent by switch s3.

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