• The boundary port is not the root port of the CIST regional root—The MSTI ports follow the state and role of the CIST port. The standard provides less information, and it might be difficult to understand why an MSTI port can be alternately blocking when it receives no BPDUs (MRecords). In this case, although the boundary role no longer exists, the show commands identify a port as boundary in the type column of the output. Interoperation Between Legacy and Standard Devices Because automatic detection of prestandard devices can fail, you can use an interface configuration command to identify prestandard ports.
A region cannot be formed between a standard and a prestandard device, but they can interoperate by using the CIST. Only the capability of load-balancing over different instances is lost in that particular case. The CLI displays different flags depending on the port configuration when a port receives prestandard BPDUs. A syslog message also appears the first time a device receives a prestandard BPDU on a port that has not been configured for prestandard BPDU transmission. Figure 2: Standard and Prestandard Device Interoperation Assume that A is a standard switch and B a prestandard switch, both configured to be in the same region.
A is the root switch for the CIST, and B has a root port (BX) on segment X and an alternate port (BY) on segment Y. If segment Y flaps, and the port on BY becomes the alternate before sending out a single prestandard BPDU, AY cannot detect that a prestandard switch is connected to Y and continues to send standard BPDUs. The port BY is fixed in a boundary, and no load balancing is possible between A and B. The same problem exists on segment X, but B might transmit topology changes. We recommend that you minimize the interaction between standard and prestandard MST implementations.
Note Configuring Multiple Spanning-Tree Protocol Interoperation Between Legacy and Standard Devices Configuring Multiple Spanning-Tree Protocol 8