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RRPP Configuration
This chapter includes these sections:
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Configuring an RRPP Ring Group
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Displaying and Maintaining RRPP
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RRPP Overview
The Rapid Ring Protection Protocol (RRPP) is a link layer protocol designed for Ethernet rings.
RRPP can prevent broadcast storms caused by data loops when an Ethernet ring is healthy,
and rapidly restore the communication paths between the nodes in the event that a link is
disconnected on the ring.
Background
Metropolitan area networks (MANs) and enterprise networks usually use the ring structure to
improve reliability. However, services will be interrupted if any node in the ring network fails. A
ring network usually uses Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) or Ethernet rings. RPR is high in cost as
it needs dedicated hardware. Contrarily, the Ethernet ring technology is more mature and
economical, so it is more and more widely used in MANs and enterprise networks.
Currently, both Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and RRPP can be used to eliminate Layer-2
loops. STP is mature; however, it takes several seconds to converge. RRPP is an Ethernet
ring-specific data link layer protocol, and converges faster than STP. Additionally, the
convergence time of RRPP is independent of the number of nodes in the Ethernet ring, and
therefore, RRPP can be applied to large-diameter networks.
