Problems with HP Procurve STP

[Claudiu Ivanescu]

Hi!

I have a ring of HP Procurve switches, it contains following models:

2626
2524
4104
4108

The total numbers of switches is 16, i wanted to use STP to make it fail prof.

I started to run STP on every switch one by one, before closing the ring.

After i start STP on more than 6 switches, when i start STP on the 7th one, it stays about 10 seconds (i think this is very much).

After I close the ring, my network goes down.

I only managed to make a ring of only 6 switches, after about 30 minutes of network down.

How can i speed up the STP and to make the full ring?

[Gonzo Granello]

Claudiu,

in essence what you are trying to do should work just fine. Here are some things to consider: make sure you use the same STP version on all switches. Even so RSTP and STP should mix, it will slow everything up. The time (10 sec) is not bad for standart STP, the IEEE allows up to 30 sec., you need to keep also in mind that STP was originally designed as a loop prevention mechanism and NOT as a redundancy protocol. As more switches as you add to your STP "ring" as more time it will indeed need to figure itself out. You can speed that up by defining the Root bridge etc. but in the end of the day, ports will be blocked for some time etc. As of why your network goes down, I would need some more details on what goes "down" or where the issue surfaces. The term "down" is kind of vague but I try some guesses.... Check the Firmware of the switches and make sure they are up to date, again STP versions in the settings, also make sure that the ports in the "ring" are STP members (hence STP is enabeld on them). If else fails, test every switch seperate, just loop the incoming and outgoing port and watch how they behave. In any scenario, as soon as you close the loop, you will experience either a short loop and/or some blocking until the switch knows what port to block and where to forward. One more thing, turn off all unneeded protocols on your uplinks like LACP etc. and again make sure the ports are configured right.

GG

[Claudiu Ivanescu]

I made a picture to ilustrate how the network is NOT working :)

The schema is how i want to have the network topology.

The problem is that if I try to make it like in the picture, the network doesn't work in various points (like Switch 3,4,5 and 6).

I don't know how much I should wait, on Cisco's the network is fully operational in about 10 minutes.

I only managed to close the link between HP ProCurve 4104 and Switch 11, and after about half an hour the switches decide to make the link between Switch 4 and 5 to blocking.

The second problem is:
After this if i close the ring between 4104 and 4108, all the network conectivity on Switch 5 and 6 fail.

Thank you.

[OLARU Dan]

Claudiu,
Da-mi un e-mail la olarud( at )cne-u2.ro
Dan

[Claudiu Ivanescu]

After updating the firmware the ring seem to work fine!