projects / people / ms / rstp.git / blame
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| ad02a0eb SH |
1 | .TH RSTPCTL 8 "August 20, 2006" "" "" |
| 2 | .SH NAME | |
| 3 | rstpd \- Daemon implementing Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol for Linux | |
| 4 | bridges. | |
| 5 | .SH SYNOPSIS | |
| 6 | .BR "rstpd [\-d] [\-v <level>]" | |
| 7 | .SH DESCRIPTION | |
| 8 | .B rstpd | |
| 9 | implements the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) on Linux | |
| 10 | bridges. When started, it merely monitors the ethernet bridges on the | |
| 11 | machine until instructed to run RSTP on any of them using | |
| 12 | .BR rstpctl . | |
| 13 | When run with the | |
| 14 | .BR "\-d" | |
| 15 | option, it runs in the foreground and outputs messages which are | |
| 16 | normally logged through syslog to standard output and standard | |
| 17 | error. With the | |
| 18 | .BR "\-v" | |
| 19 | option, the level of verbosity of the logs can be controlled. | |
| 20 | See | |
| 21 | .BR rstpctl (8) | |
| 22 | for more information on configuring RSTP. | |
| 23 | ||
| 24 | .SH SPANNING TREE PROTOCOL | |
| 25 | Multiple ethernet bridges can work together to create even larger | |
| 26 | networks of ethernets using the IEEE 802.1d spanning tree | |
| 27 | protocol. This protocol is used for finding the shortest path between | |
| 28 | two ethernets, and for eliminating loops from the topology. As this | |
| 29 | protocol is a standard, linux bridges will interwork properly with | |
| 30 | other third party bridge products. Bridges communicate with eachother | |
| 31 | by sending and receiving BPDUs (Bridge Protocol Data Units). These | |
| 32 | BPDUs can be recognised by an ethernet destination address of | |
| 33 | 01:80:c2:00:00:00. | |
| 34 | ||
| 35 | The spanning tree protocol can also be turned off (for those | |
| 36 | situations where it just doesn't make sense, for example when this | |
| 37 | linux box is the only bridge on the LAN, or when you know that there | |
| 38 | are no loops in the topology.) | |
| 39 | ||
| 40 | The 2004 version of the 802.1D specification describes the Rapid | |
| 41 | Spanning Tree Protocol, which supercedes the older Spanning Tree | |
| 42 | Protocol while providing for backward compatible operation with it. | |
| 43 | It provides for faster reconfiguration during network changes than | |
| 44 | STP in many cases. | |
| 45 | ||
| 46 | .SH NOTES | |
| 47 | TODO: Indicate lack of persistence of configuration across restarts of | |
| 48 | daemon. | |
| 49 | ||
| 50 | .SH SEE ALSO | |
| 51 | .BR rstpctl(8), | |
| 52 | .BR brctl(8) | |
| 53 | ||
| 54 | .SH COPYRIGHT | |
| 55 | This manual page Copyright (c) 2006 EMC Corporation. | |
| 56 | ||
| 57 | This manual page is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it | |
| 58 | under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free | |
| 59 | Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) | |
| 60 | any later version. It comes with NO WARRANTY. | |
| 61 | .\" The full GNU General Public License is included in this distribution in the | |
| 62 | .\" file called LICENSE. | |
| 63 | ||
| 64 | .SH AUTHOR | |
| 65 | Srinivas Aji <Aji_Srinivas@emc.com> |