This lesson continues our examination of the spanning tree features designed to protect the loop-free tree and the root bridge placement.

Fiber patch cables usually come in pairs—one strand sends data (Tx), and the other receives it (Rx), as shown in the diagram below. This setup lets data flow both ways at the same time, which is called full-duplex communication.

In networking, fiber optic cables are typically made of a pair of fiber strands: one strand for transmitting (Tx) data and the other for receiving (Rx) data, as shown in the diagram below.

This lesson discusses another spanning-tree security feature called BPDU Guard. It is used to protect the STP topology and the root bridge from rogue switches.

Once an STP topology has fully converged and loops are eliminated, each switch port takes on a specific role, as follows:

Rapid Spanning Tree uses a synchronization process to negotiate port roles and states and speed up the convergence process. This lesson discusses the process in detail, using examples.

In the previous lesson, we saw what Portfast is and when we use it in modern networks. This lesson discusses another spanning-tree feature called Uplinkfast. Before we begin, let's examine the obvious:

In this lesson, we discuss a spanning-tree feature called PortFast. It is used to optimize the ports that connect to end-user devices by skipping the Listening and Learning state and directly putting the ports to Forwarding.

In this lab, we discuss how we customize the spanning-tree loop-free topology. Typically, most real-world switching environments only select the placement of the root bridge and leave all other settings at their default values.

In the previous section of this course, we examined the classical per-VLAN spanning tree (PVST+), which is based on the original STP (IEEE 802.1D).