A hyper-cube based modified Spanning Tree Protocol for VLANs

VLANs offer significant benefits in terms of efficient bandwidth, flexibility, performance and security by logically segmenting the network into different broadcast subsets which switch packets merely between the designated ports of the same VLAN. Spanning tree protocol (STP) is extensively used in active topology configuration of VLANS. This protocol prevents from layer 2 loops in networks by breaking the loop paths and manages network links providing path redundancy as a consequence. Because of uneven distribution of communication traffic in root nodes in tree topologies, current weakness of STP performance in terms of traffic management could be improved by involving the idea of hyper-cubes in the STP mechanism. Imparting the association of spanning trees and logical hyper-cubes by the base tree, the current research is aimed to apply modifications to the STP algorithm by the use of hyper-cube routing as a congestion control mechanism in the STP. The analysis of the result demonstrates the superiority of the proposed method over the basic STP algorithm.