BPDU Interoperability Between Cisco & Other Vendors

[Ali Hazim]

Hi Everyone,

Cisco Device's Use The MAC Address (01:00:0C:CC:CC:CD) As The Multicast Destination Address For Its BPDUs.

Other Vendors Follow The IEEE Standard And Use The MAC Address (01:80:C2:00:00:00).

So When Connecting a Cisco Switch To a Switch Of Another Vendor, How Will The Spanning Tree Work Between Them If They're Using Different Addresses?

[Joseph W. Doherty]

You can get Cisco's STP to work with some other vendors' equipment.  The most common issue, other than MSTP, Cisco's STP is per VLAN, where most other vendors use one common STP instance.