| 摘要 |
The invention relates to a method and apparatus for disseminating Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) membership information across computer networks defining multiple spanning trees. An intermediate network device configured in accordance with the invention includes a plurality of ports and a plurality of spanning tree engines each associated with one or more VLAN designations defined within the network. The spanning tree engines transition the ports among a plurality of port states, including a forwarding state and a blocked state. For each port, a separate Generic Attribute Registration Protocol (GARP) participant is also established and each GARP participant includes a multiple spanning tree (MST) GARP VLAN Registration Protocol (MST-GVRP) application component and an associated GARP Information Declaration (GID) component. The MST-GVRP application components cooperate to define a plurality of GARP Information Propagation (GIP) contexts each of which is associated with a spanning tree engine and thus its one or more VLAN designations. The MST-GVRP applications participate in zero, one or more of the GIP contexts depending on their spanning tree port states for the corresponding VLAN designations.
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