I am trying to test Rapid Spanning Tree on an Ethernet ring. Most of what I found does not seem to apply to my specific situation, but I am happy to be pointed elsewhere.
Specifically, I have one Ethernet switch. Connected to that switch is a ring of "simple" Ethernet devices, each with 2 ports that do a simple passthrough/forward. So, to attempt an illustration:
switch
/ \
Dev1 -- Dev2
The devices don't send their own RSTP packets. A real network would have 10s of devices in the loop. Before you complain "why would you do that?", this is moderately common in "industrial Ethernet" setups to provide redundancy but at a significant savings in wiring cost.
My problem is, while RSTP is working and the network connects, if I disconnect and reconnect one of the wires at the switch (generally the lower numbered port), it takes 30 seconds (listen+learn) to bring the connection back up. Clearly it is defaulting to the old STP algorithm.
Is this there any way to get the few-second recovery times generally promised by RSTP? Or is this just the way it is with a simple ring?