Traffic Engineering in Enterprise Ethernet with Multiple Spanning Tree
Regions
M. Padmaraj, S. Nair, M. Marchetti
HACNet Labs, Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas, USA
Abstract
IEEE 802.1S multiple spanning tree protocol
(MSTP) is part of a family of standards for local and
metropolitan area networks based on Ethernet
protocol. MSTP allows a set of regions to be defined
whose logical union spans the entire network, which in
turn defines the association between VLANs and
Spanning Tree Instances. In this paper we propose an
algorithmic approach for constructing multiple
spanning tree regions in the enterprise network
domain which will provide better convergence time,
reusability of VLAN tags, protection from failures, and
optimal broadcast domain size.
1. Introduction
Ethernet protocol relies on IEEE 802.1d spanning
tree protocol (STP) [1] to provide loop-free
connectivity across various network nodes with a
single tree. Any failure in the tree will cause a
reconstruction of the spanning tree (ST), disrupting
traffic flowing in the entire network, and the process
will take up to 60 seconds [10]. Time critical
applications in enterprise networks require a
reconfiguration time less than few tens of milliseconds.
Further, STP uses a single ST to carry the whole
network traffic, resulting in congestion and resource
underutilization.
To improve upon reconstruction time 802.1w [2]
standardized its Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP).
Although RSTP reconstructs the tree in less than a
seconds, does no load sharing and problems similar to
STP still exists.
If the IEEE 802.1d Ethernet switches were
deployed at the core of a Metro domain, the core
switches would have to learn thousands of MAC
addresses. This may result in huge MAC address
tables that have to be maintained by the core Metro
switches leading to MAC address table explosion.
IEEE standardized 802.1s Multiple Spanning Tree
Protocol (MSTP) [3] to deal with problems related to
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G. Chiruvolu, M. Ali
R&I Alcatel USA,
Plano, Texas, USA
traffic engineering of Ethernet. MSTP provides
alternate paths between two nodes within an
administrative region such that basic traffic
engineering can be enabled. This standard provides
guidelines to better resource utilization, localization of
failures and faster recovery.
MSTP uses multiple spanning trees (MST) and
virtual LANs (VLAN) [4] are mapped onto these trees.
802.1q specifies a method for tagging (with Q-tags)
Ethernet frames with VLAN membership. This VLAN
tag or ID (VID) is a 12 bit field, which identifies the
VLANs to which a frame belongs in a shared network
[7]. The enterprise may run out of VIDs and this is a
scalability issue. Determining a proper mapping
between VLANs and STs is another issue. In order to
address these problems MSTP proposes MST regions,
which provides mapping between VLANs and STs.
These are physical sub-networks where switches with
similar properties form a region. With this kind of
region formation, a VLAN is restricted to a physical
region, making it difficult to support virtual and
dynamic nature of VLANs.
In this paper we propose an algorithmic approach
to effectively divide the network domain into smaller
MST regions and hence achieve faster recovery,
localize failures and provide protection within the
region. Our approach uses VLANs not switches as the
base of region formation. This method is flexible and
supports dynamic VLAN registration and removal.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows.
Background work is described in the next section.
Section 3 proposes an algorithmic approach to region
construction. Section 4 presents some experimental
results showing the performance of our approach.
Finally section 5 concludes the paper with
summarizing the work and future directions.
2. Background work
A Collection of MSTs in a VLAN-aware network
is defined as a Spanning Forest (SF). The SF allows
the utilization of all links that would otherwise be
 idled by the standard spanning tree and thereby
eliminating the wastage of bandwidth. However, the
complexity of management increases with the number
of STs and the switches must maintain port state
information for each ST of the SF and the set of
VLANs mapped on to them.
The MSTP solved the problem of mapping
multiple VLANs to a single ST. However, the problem
of determining what VLAN is to be associated with
which ST instance needs to be addressed. The IEEE
802.1s committee proposed a solution by introducing
MST regions. A region can be thought of as an
equivalent of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
Autonomous Systems, which is a group of switches
placed under a common administration [8]. Within a
region one or more MSTs can be defined. MSTP
ensures that the frames of a given VLAN are assigned
to one and only one of the ST instances within a
region.
The MSTP should be able to identify the
boundaries of regions to ensure a consistent VLAN to
ST instance mapping [8]. For this, the characteristics
of regions are included in the bridge protocol data
units (BPDU). For detecting the boundary of a region,
the switches that are members of a region need to
know only the region(s) to which the neighboring
switch belongs. A switch uses the region information
for creating the VLAN-to-ST instance digest. When
the other switch receives the BPDU, it attempts to
extract the information from the digest, using its own
region information as key. Once extracted, the switch
compares the extracted VLAN-to-ST instance table
with its own table. If they are different the switch
belongs to different regions.
A set of carefully engineered regions can increase
the performance of entire enterprise network. To
achieve the best possible engineering of regions, the
goals behind the construction of region needs to be
stated. Splitting the entire network to multiple regions
essentially splits the traffic from the nodes and thus
prevents unnecessary broadcast traffic flowing through
the network. Attaining faster recovery in a smaller
region is much easier, than trying to attain the same in
the entire network domain. Also faults can be
localized to avoid network-wide failure. Having STs in
a very large domain, attaining protection can become
fairly challenging. When we deal with smaller regions,
guaranteeing at least 2-connectivity (to avoid single
failure) becomes much easier, when compared to a
guarantee like this for the entire network.
While usage of VLANs is a well understood fact
in Ethernet, their usage is limited to a maximum 4096
because it depends on the 12 bit VLAN ID. However,
in large enterprises, just 4096 VLANs will not be
sufficient. MST Regions can be used as a solution
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where tags can be repeated in regions. However,
practical studies indicate that present switches can
handle only up to approximately 3500 VLANs in
acceptable amount of switching time. Splitting the
network to regions can help keep the number of
VLANs in a region to a much lesser number, thereby
giving a performance boost.
In MST regions a switch belongs to only one
region in the network. However, VLANs are not
restricted to a particular physical location like simple
LANs. End systems can be added, deleted or moved
from VLAN making it dynamic. Having switches
belong to predefined regions will not guarantee that
VLANs will also follow the same rule of region
membership. Since VLANs do not belong to any
physical location, with the current configuration, there
is a high probability that they will span across multiple
regions.
A fault tolerant MSTP is proposed in Viking [10].
The Viking system provides at least two switching
paths between any pair of end-nodes in two different
STs. Viking relies on per-VLAN-ST implementation
of Cisco where there is a separate ST running on every
switch for every VLAN. This has the limitation on the
number of VLANs the metro Ethernet can support due
to the maximum VLAN tag size and the number of
STs a switch can support.
We have proposed an optimal multiple spanning
tree construction algorithm for Metro Ethernet in [5],
which is an iterative approach using traffic demand
and dynamic link weight characteristics to fine tune
the initial ST to ensure that the resulting tree will
satisfy the demand requirements and offer the best
possible performance. Further in [2], we proposed a
novel scheme for congestion control in Ethernet which
is highly scalable and robust. These can easily be
combined with our new proposal to provide uniform
resource utilization with failure localization and faster
recovery.
3. Region algorithm
In our approach members of different VLANs can
be attached to a switch, and thus the switch itself may
be part of multiple regions. When switches participate
in several regions, links attached to these switches
may also act as members of more than one region.
This technique is very flexible and scalable; switches
can be added or removed from a region based on the
membership of a VLAN in the region. For example,
adding a new member to a VLAN ‘v’ involves adding
this member to a switch. If this switch is not part of
the region where v has its membership, add this new
switch to the region. However, the method we use to
 construct the region should meet the following
requirements:
1. Provisioning protection.
2. Guaranteed minimum 2-connectivity.
3. Faster recovery from failures.
4. Size of the region vs. performance.
5. Optimal broadcast domain size
6. Reusability of VLAN tags.
Protection from single failures can be achieved by
guaranteeing at least 2-connectivity within the region,
thus, the first and second goals are closely related.
Broadcast domain size depends on the size of the
domain and diameter. Faster recovery can be achieved
if the region is small. Therefore third, fourth and fifth
goals are closely related. However, having too many
small regions in the network can result in more control
messages and will kill the purpose of a region. Hence
we need to come up with an optimal size for the region,
which should consider number of nodes and diameter.
Definition1: Consider network as a graph G (N, E),
where N is the set of nodes and E is the set of links.
The problem is to divide the graph into regions R1,
R2…. Rk such that |Ri| ” z and VLAN vi İ Rm & vi ӈ
Rn. Also if ni İ N it is possible that ni İ Rm and ni İ Rn,
and there can be link ei İ E, ei İ Rm and ei İ Rn.
This problem can be formulated as a graph
partition algorithm. However, the specific feature
about this partition is that a node (switch) or link can
be part of multiple partitions. One simple solution can
be to look at all possible VLAN combinations and
then pick the best regions satisfying our goals. Though
this operation is performed offline, this technique will
generate an exponentially large number of
combinations. Therefore, an algorithm which is not
exponential, and at the same time, produces a nearly
optimal solution is required.
We use a voting technique with node adjacencies
to find members of the region. Also we make the
assumption that every node in the network has a
minimum degree of 2.
Definition2: The vertex connectivity of a graph G =
(N,E) in terms of its pair-wise vertex connectivity is,
VC (G) = min {VC(G, u, v)}, edge (u, v) is not in
E(G).
An overview of the algorithm is given in Fig1.
This algorithm is divided into two major sections, ‘2-
Connected Region Formation’ and ‘Region
Expansion’. Algorithm starts with a random VLAN Vt
and assumes this as a region. Next step is to make this
region 2-connected by adding additional nodes. If the
region can still accommodate more nodes, add another
VLAN and continue this process. Continue generating
regions until there are no more VLANs left.
When considering smaller regions some VLANS
may not fit in any available regions. The problem
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could be the size of VLAN or the VLAN nodes are too
sparse. We call these VLANs ‘blocked VLAN’. Based
on the availability of VLAN tags we either leave it as
regions representing single VLANs or group them
together to form one region to represent all blocked
VLANs.
ƒ Start a new region Rk. Region has three parameters, list of
VLANs, list of nodes and maximum region size ‘z’.
ƒ Pick a VLAN to start with and add VLAN ‘Vt’ to region’s
VLAN list.
ƒ Construct a 2-connected region from the given VLAN nodes.
ƒ Expand the region by adding more VLANs and external nodes
up to a maximum size of ‘z’ nodes.
ƒ Continue constructing regions until there are no more VLANs
left.
Figure 1. Algorithm overview
Before describing the algorithm we introduce
some of the terms (procedures) used in the
algorithmsuch as ‘VLAN-Region share list’, ‘Tagging’,
‘Voting’, ‘Ensuring 2-connectivity’, and ‘Coarsening’.
3.1. Terminologies
3.1.1. VLAN-Region share list (VR list). VR list
gives the percentage of nodes (switch) shared between
a VLAN i and a specific region Rk. This list will be
initialized with zeros and updated as we partition the
network. This list will help in choosing candidate
VLANs for a region. If there is a 100% sharing of
nodes between a VLAN and region, then that VLAN
must be included in the region. Otherwise, the
inclusion of a VLAN will be based on criteria
specified in the algorithm.
Table 1. Sample VLAN-Region share list (VR list)
VLAN1 100%
VLAN2 60%
VLAN2 70%
----- -----
3.1.2. Tagging. This process is used to identify how
distant a node is from a region. A lower tag means the
node is closer to the region. To start with, all the nodes
in the network which belong to the region are assigned
a tag 1. Now for each node with tag 1, find all adjacent
non–tagged nodes and assign the tag 2. Continue this
process to tag all the nodes in the network. Steps
involved in tagging are given in Fig 2.
To avoid inconsistency we never tag nodes which
are already tagged. For example, consider a node ‘N’
with tag 3. While tagging N’s neighbors with tag 4,
avoid all nodes which are already tagged 4 or less
(there will not be a node with tag grater than 4 because
the current highest tag value is 4). During the course
of the algorithm more nodes will be added to the
region and these new nodes will get a tag 1. This will
result in retagging other nodes in the network. An
example graph with tags is given in Fig 3.
 x Assign tag 1 to all nodes part of the region.
x For each nodes with tag n
ƒ Find all non tagged neighbors and assign tag n+1
ƒ Next tag n = n+1
ƒ Repeat this until all nodes in the network are tagged.
Figure 2. Tagging
3.1.3. Voting. Voting is used to identify how densely
a node is connected to the region. All nodes in the
network will get a chance to vote its neighbors.
However, a vote is only assigned to nodes which are
not part of the current region. A node with tag k can
give a vote of 1/k to all its neighbors. Nodes with tag
value 1 will give a vote 1 to all its immediate
neighbors, clearly stating that these nodes are adjacent
to the region. Fig 3 plots a graph with tags and votes.
Figure 3. Example for tagging & voting
The voting using ‘1/tag’ explains how actively a
node is connected to the region and as tag values
increase (nodes which are far from the region) the
downstream nodes will get lower votes, resulting in
avoiding them from region expansion. For example a
node with several votes (1s) from region nodes, added
together to a very large number, shows that this node
is heavily connected to the region. Now take a
scenario where a node is just connected to one region
member, with a very low overall vote, will always lose
out when competing with the node from previous
scenario for inclusion in the region. Thus, voting with
tagging select nodes which are immediate neighbors
and densely connected to the region. This keeps the
diameter of the region to an acceptable level. As
explained in the tagging section, when new nodes
become part of the region, a re-voting is required.
3.1.4. Coarsening. This is used to reduce the size of a
graph without losing its properties. Coarsening will
help in continuing the algorithm on a simplified graph,
thus reducing the algorithm complexity. An example
of coarsening is illustrated in Fig 4.
Figure 4. Coarsening
3.1.5. Ensuring 2-connectivity. After tagging and
voting processes, algorithm extracts a 2-connected
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sub-graph from the network with all given region
nodes. This involves adding some additional nodes
into the region to make it 2-connected. We call these
nodes ‘bridge-nodes’ (these nodes act as bridges
between region nodes).
The problem of finding minimum k-edge
connected and k-vertex connected sub-graphs in a
given graph is an NP-hard problem. There are several
algorithms with different approximation factors. Since
the problem is NP-hard, many of these approaches are
very complex. Even though our goal is to minimize the
number of bridge-nodes in the region, having extra
nodes will not hurt the performance of the region or
any of our goals. Additional bridge-nodes in the region
provides more resources. Since nodes are shared
between regions, there is no wastage of resources and
these bridge-nodes will also help in selecting other
VLANs which are very close to the current region
when expanding the region size.
Our algorithm uses some concepts of Steiner Tree
construction from [11]. We use this concept because a
Steiner Tree spans a given subset of vertices with the
minimal total distance on its edges. Since the ultimate
goal is to make a sub-graph not a tree, we have only
used some initial steps from the algorithm to help us in
finding the smallest possible 2-connected sub-graph
with region nodes. The steps involved in this process
are explained in Fig 5.
3.2. Formation of a 2-Connected Region
First process in the algorithm is to form a 2-
connected sub-graph representing the region. To start
with, a randomly selected VLAN is used as the region.
To provide reliability, a 2-connected sub-graph is
generated with current region nodes and some
additional nodes. This is where the tagging and voting
processes help us select non-region member nodes to
make the region 2-connected. Nodes are selected
based on the tag and vote to ensure that they are close
to the region and heavily connected to other region
nodes. Fig 6 details a description of the algorithm.
3.3. Expanding the Region
This process repeats twice in the algorithm, first
while expanding the region with a new VLAN, and
second when expanding the region with nodes to
achieve better connectivity. For both the processes we
need to find ȕ, which is,
ȕ = z- |Rk| where |Rk| is the number of nodes in the
region.
To add a new VLAN, value of ȕ must be at least
the number of nodes that required to be added to the
region so that the region can accommodate this VLAN.
 Towards that, first scan through table1 and find a
VLAN which shares the maximum number of nodes
with the region. Now run algorithm (Fig 5) steps 2 to 6
to find out the number nodes to be added to make the
region 2-connected with the new VLAN. If this
number is at most ȕ, then add this VLAN, otherwise
backtrack to the previous condition of the region and
repeat the same process with the next shared VLAN.
However, care must be taken when doing this process.
The region we are trying to expand is a single node
representing ‘n’ region nodes (this is after coarsening).
When the 2-connected graph is constructed, all links
incident on the region node may incident on the same
node in the uncoarsened region, resulting in a cut
vertex. Though a very rare scenario, to avoid this we
do a check after the 2-connected graph is created to
see if there is a cut vertex in the previous version of
the region for this new graph. If there is a cut vertex,
then select a node from the set of newly added nodes,
which is tightly connected to the previous version of
the region, and find a shortest path from this node to
any node in the previous version of the region, other
than the cut vertex.
1. Identify all nodes which are part of the region (let us call
theses nodes R-nodes).
2. Find shortest paths between every pair of R-node using
simple Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm. The weights used
are Tag and Vote. First we will look at the smallest tag value,
and if there are same tag values, then the highest vote will
win.
3. Construct a fully connected graph with all R-nodes and use
the weights of shortest paths between these nodes in the
original graph as the path cost.
4. Construct a minimum ST in the new fully connected graph
with any random root node.
5. Replace all paths in the ST with shortest paths from the
original graph.
6. Connect all leaf nodes to make the sub-graph 2-connected.
A. Have a list of all leaf nodes.
B. Check if there are any direct edges connecting these leaf
nodes in the original graph (since a ST does not contain all
edges connecting its nodes from the original graph, this is
possible). If yes, then combine all these leaf nodes (check
the coarsening section for details), remove them from the
list of leaf nodes, and add these combined nodes into the
list of leaf nodes. The combined node is not a leaf node
anymore; however, we will call it a leaf to continue the
process.
C. Start with one randomly selected leaf node.
D. Start Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm and continue until
another leaf node is reached. When selecting path nodes
exclude nodes which are part of the ST.
E. Add nodes in the path to the region’s node list.
F. Combine all nodes in the path to one node.
G. Remove these two leaf nodes from the leaf node list and
add the new combined node.
H. Repeat steps B to G until there is only one leaf node.
Figure 5. Extracting a 2-connected sub-graph
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Once the region is no more expandable with
VLANs, the second expansion algorithm is applied.
This step is an optional addition to the algorithm. After
the expansion process in the previous stage, if ȕ is still
a positive value, find some nodes which are tightly
connected to the region, such that ȕ is near to 0 or as
desired. Similar to what we explained in the 2-
connectivity section, these additional nodes will
increase performance and will not cause any resource
wastage. A step-by-step description of the algorithm is
given in Fig 7, which is a continuation of Fig 6.
1. Start a new region Rk. Region has three parameters, list of
VLANs, list of nodes and maximum region size ‘z’.
2. Pick a VLAN to start with and add VLAN type ‘Vt’ to
region’s VLAN list.
3. Add nodes of VLAN to region’s node list.
4. Assign tags to all nodes in the network (details are given in
section ‘Tagging’).
5. For each node in the network assign a vote to all its
neighbors (details are given in section ‘Voting).
6. Find a 2-connected sub-graph with region nodes (details are
given in section ‘Ensuring 2-connectivity’).
a. Construct a minimum ST connecting all the region nodes
using tags and votes as weights.
b. Connect all the leaf nodes of the ST to get a 2-connected
graph.
7. Now all nodes in the ST belong to the region, so repeat steps
4 and 5 to reassign tags and votes.
8. Update table1 (VR list) to reflect nodes shared between the
region and other VLANs.
9. Check table1 for VLANs sharing 100% of its nodes with the
region. If any, add to the regions VLAN list.
10. Coarsen the network to one node representing the region
(details are given in section ‘Coarsening’).
Figure 6. Constructing a 2-connected region
11. If | Rk | >= z, then skip to step 15, otherwise continue with
next step.
12. Find ȕ, the maximum # of nodes that can added to the
region such that if |Rk| = z.
13. Find other heavily shared VLANs to include in the region,
given that the maximum number of nodes to add is ȕ (details
are given in section ‘Expanding regions’).
14. Once the region is no more expandable, stop the process and
remove VLANs that are members of this region from the
graph (just VLANs, not nodes).
15.If ȕ > 0 find nodes with lowest tag and most votes, add into
the region to assure more connectivity (details are given in
section ‘Expanding regions’).
16.Repeat steps 1 thru 15 until no more VLAN is left out in the
graph.
Figure 7. Algorithm to expand region
4. Simulation
Simulations were performed on randomly
generated networks to study the performance of our
approach for region generation. We used the ITM tool
from Georgia Tech to generate random networks and
output of this tool (Sanford Graph Base format) is
converted into an adjacency matrix using our
 algorithm. Then VLANs are generated and attached to
nodes in the network. This module takes as input the
desired number of VLANs to be generated. Once the
network is prepared, the region-generator module
splits the network into virtual sub-networks.
The simulation was tested with several networks
with different switch count and VLANs. The regions
generated from the simulation was first tested for 2-
connectivity. The results proved that we can provide
protection from at least one node or link failure.
The broadcast domain size of the region was
tested using the diameter, which is the longest shortest
path in the network. Longest shortest path can be
calculated by all pair shortest path algorithm [9] and
then take the longest path from this list of shortest
paths. The diameter is measured using the delay
involved at the nodes and delay on links. Graph
showing different diameters for a 50 node network
with 15, 20, 25 and 30 VLANs is given in Fig 8. This
graph shows that as the region size increases, the
diameter also increases. However, this increase in
diameter is flatter when we have a large number of
VLANs in the network. Another noticeable outcome is
that as the number of VLANs increase, we get a
tighter region, meaning a better diameter. This clearly
indicates that when we have more VLANs to choose
from, the region is more optimal; hence, proving that
our approach will work well in a bigger network with
large number of nodes and VLANs.
15 VLANs
25 VLANs
2800
Diameter (Micro sec)
2600
2400
2200
2000
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 1820 22 24 26
Region size (# of nodes)
Figure 8. Diameter
Simulation result in Fig 9 shows the comparison
of our approach (logical regions) with physical regions
based on number of blocked VLANs. In the physical
region a switch is allowed to be part of only one
region. We used our algorithm to generate physical
regions, by iteratively creating a sub-network and then
removing nodes which are part of the region from the
network. Results show that there is a sharp increase in
the number of VLANs blocked with small physical
regions.
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5. Conclusion
In this paper we introduced a multiple spanning tree
region construction algorithm which provides basic
traffic engineering of Ethernet in the Enterprise
domain. The proposed method supports dynamic
nature of VLANs where VLAN nodes can be added,
moved, or removed without much effort. Also our
method provides enough resources in the region to
support protection from at least single failures.
Through a number of simulation experiments, we
concluded that this approach can be used to increase
the performance of the MSTP by dividing the network
into regions based on VLANs. This algorithm can be
easily extended to construct regions based on traffic
priorities, departments, access privileges and security
requirements.
Figure 9. Blocked VLANs
20 VLA Ns
6. References
30 VLA Ns
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[3]. IEEE 802.1s, “Multiple Spanning Trees”.
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Ali and A. Ge. “Metro Ethernet Traffic Engineering
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