Patent ID: 8787211

Claim:
A method in a Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) domain comprising a plurality of Ethernet switches interconnected by links, wherein at least two of the plurality of Ethernet switches comprise ports defined as Layer 2 Gateway Ports (L2GPs), comprising the steps of: configuring the at least two L2GPs to the same pseudo root outside the STP domain by means of a first emulated connection and a second emulated connection, wherein the emulated connections from the L2GPs to the same pseudo root is achieved by assigning the same pseudo root identity to the L2GPs, and associating L2GP with a root path cost from the respective L2GP to the pseudo root, wherein the root path cost of the first L2GP differs from the root path cost of the second L2GP to only keep one of the first emulated connection and the second emulated connection open towards the pseudo root, wherein the root path cost of the L2GP is a function of the bandwidth of an associated physical link or physical link aggregation group.