Lots of mac flapping and Cisco > Netgear STP setup

[jsherman31]

So in our environment we have a cisco and netgear devices. Specifically 2960x and gs7xxtpv2(netgear). Our core 3750 is using rapid pvst (it shows up as rstp) and all of our netgear devices are set to rstp. We only have 2 vlans so it's a rather small network. 100 for voice 101 for data. On all of our cisco switches if i do show logs I get a lot of mac flapping for devices in vlan 101 and on the netgear sometimes i see a lot of port up/downs/bridge topology change notifications/ports going through stp phases. The network seems to run fine and no real issues with network connectivity or bandwidth or anything. However, something I noticed recently is that netgear devices connected to netgear devices all show RSTP however, on our 2960x switches it seems those are using pvst. I've seemed to have a lapse in knowledge and did not remember that pvst is essentially STP. So netgear - netgear it shows RSTP but netgear - cisco it shows STP. I took a spare cisco and netgear switch and set them up locally and connected them together and enabled rapid pvst ont he cisco switch and on netgears side of the link it shows RSTP. So would that explain some of the topology change notification, the port flapping errors and the mac flapping? Has anyone else ever run into that issue with cisco/netgear environment?

For the most part, there's no real issues I've noticed and as far as our ethernet network goes, we've never had any outages. 

Thanks in advance. 

[marce1000]

   - In general ; the spanning three algorithm used , should be 'completely the same' on all platforms and nodes ,

 M.

[jsherman31]

I agree. However, our netgears are typically access layer switches and cisco are our core/distribution layer. Cisco equipment cost quite the $$$ but I agree whether mst or rstp it should be the same.

[MHM Cisco World]

Can netgear run mst?

MHM

[jsherman31]

Netgear can run mst but for our small networked environment I feel rstp may be better suitable i feel like mstp might be a bit more complex/overkill for our environment. Our core layer switch is using RSTP (rapid pvst) and netgear is set to use rstp. But looks like our distribution/access cisco switches are using pvst which when connecte to netgear shows up as STP. So i think I'll run RSTP in our enviornment. We only have 2 vlans and I think even 5 years down the line I can see only a need to add like 2-3 more vlans. I"m going to implement a management vlan, and a wireless vlan eventually. 

[MHM Cisco World]

If your SW support rstp (not rapid-pvst) then sure it better than MST' MST as you mention is complicates.

Update me when yoh change to rstp 

MHM

[jsherman31]

Will do. I'm hoping it's just a bit of a weird misunderstanding. Like on our core cisco switch, "show spanning-tree" shows "rstp" but the only options are mst, pvst and rapid-pvst. And testing it on a spare cisco/netgear switch, changing the cisco to rapid-pvst shows the spanning tree mode as rstp and netrgear shows rstp as it should. The more you know. I'll plan to make the change on our cisco switches tonight so I'll let ya'll know how that goes. 

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello,

on a side note, RPVST is Cisco proprietary, but compatible with RSTP, that is probably why your Cisco switches are showing RSTP...

[jsherman31]

So i was able to switch the core switch over to rapid pvst with no issue. Unfortunately that didn't resolve the map flapping notifications. I read somewhere that it can be normal as it might be users roaming from one AP to another. But we virtually have no vlan segmentation. We have vlan 1 for everything and vlan 100 for ip phones. So I'll go ahead and close this and since we're getting a new core switch I may take that opportunity to segment our traffic a bit more with vlan 10 to replace vlan 1 and vlan 3 for APs and 20 for servers. 

[MHM Cisco World]

But I inform you before RSTP in Cisco different than RSTP of othet vendor' 

And can i ask did you try MST?

MHM