The problem is that it prevents the spanning tree protocol from working correctly. This is a network protocol that was implemented in 1993 to solve a problem (unreliable spanning tree) where a tree that was spanning two nodes in one network was unable to communicate with the spanning tree on a second network. The problem was solved by creating two separate networks.
The problem is that the spanning tree protocol doesn’t handle the case of spanning a tree in two directions with one node. For example, if you have a tree with the root node in one network and the root node on the other network, and both network nodes have two end nodes, then the spanning tree protocol fails to work. Because it’s impossible to have a spanning tree on two networks with one node, the spanning tree protocol itself has no way to work in this situation.
So that is basically what is preventing the spanning tree protocol from work. But there are some solutions that come to mind.
the most obvious solution is to build a spanning tree between the two nodes instead. Since the spanning tree protocol itself has no way to work in this situation, it’s not going to work anyway.
Then there’s a more practical idea as well. You could probably build a spanning tree where the two nodes are on the same IP subnet, but you would likely need to be able to do the routing yourself.
This is a good point and one we were aware of. I don’t really suggest this because I think there are enough problems with the spanning tree protocol that you’ll just end up with the same problem from scratch with the spanning tree protocol. But here’s a more practical idea that I think would work very well: use a different protocol like the IPsec protocol to transport the traffic between the two nodes.
And if youre going to use the spanning tree protocol, you have to make sure you can create a link which is not a loop. Otherwise the spanning tree protocol will not work properly and you will get a security vulnerability. If youre not going to use the spanning tree protocol, you should probably use IPSec.
Its not quite as obvious in the IPsec protocol because the IPsec protocol uses the IP address of the node to determine the path to the other node, but you can use the IP address to determine which node you are going to send a packet to. It also uses the node’s MAC address for the IPsec negotiation. If you dont want to use the IPsec protocol, IPSec would be a good option.
The protocol here is actually a lot like the standard protocol. You could do IPSec on each node, but then you could also use a dedicated IPSec interface to send a packet to all nodes. That way, if you can get the node to send a packet to the target node, then it doesn’t have to send a packet to the other nodes. If you dont want to use the protocol, you can use the standard protocol.
It is a bit complicated because if you only have one node, then you have to use the standard protocol and if you have two nodes, then you have to use the IPsec protocol. But if you have more that two nodes, then it is more complicated and you would have to use a dedicated interface to send a packet to all the nodes. This is one reason why IPsec is considered a more secure way to create a secure tunnel between two nodes.
