Consequences of not setting edge port as portfast?

[daniel_heimburg]

Will it only make STP converge slower? Or are there any other consequences to be concerned about?

Thanks!

[InayathUlla Sharieff]

Port-Fast and Edge ports are usually configured to the ports which are connected to End Stations.

As we want the end station not to participate in the STP states and to avoid the port staying inactive for about 30-50 seconds we make the port into portfast state. Which means it immediately puts the port into forwarding and skip the other states.

PortFast causes a port to enter the forwarding state almost immediately by dramatically decreasing the time of the listening and learning states. Portfast minimizes the time it takes for the server or workstation to come online, thus preventing problems with applications such as DHCP, DNS, Novell IPX, PXE, BootWorks, etc.

The spanning-tree protocol is always running even when the port is in forwarding state so that it can still detect loops, however the use of Portfast should only be implemented when the port on the switch is directly connected to a server/workstation and never to another hub/switch.

Concerned:- You should not connect any switch/hub to this port. Else you need to configure the security mechanism on the port-fast such as BPDU guard/filter.

HTH

Regards

Inayath

[daniel_heimburg]

So basically, if I have a port connected to a server and it's NOT configured as an edge port (portfast) the only drawback I will see is a 30-50 second inactive port?

[daniel_heimburg]

Reason I ask is that we recently experienced a (presumed) STP loop and I'm trying to figure out if our server ports that did not have portfast could have been involved in making a loop.

[Madhukrishnan Gopinathan Nair]

Hello Daniel,

Your problem may not have any to do with Portfast

Consequence of not enabling port-fast on edge port - if the edge port is connecting to user pc's , you may see a lot of STP TCN when user swith off/on PC's which is unwanted basically.  But it don't do any harm :)

Hope this answers you.

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Thanks,

Madhu