Table of Contents

Figures vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

Abbreviations xvii

1. IEEE 802.1aq in a Nutshell: Antecedents and Technology 1

2. Why SPB Looks as It Does 36

3. Why the SPB Control Plane Looks as It Does 74

4. Practical Deployment Considerations 130

5. Applications of SPB 150

6. Futures 158

Conclusion 186

References 188

Index 190

About the Author

David Allan is a Distinguished Engineer at Ericsson and aformer Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Nortel. He is theholder of some thirty patents in telecommunications, includingseveral for the co-invention of technology fundamental to 802.1aqand 802.1Qay. In addition, he co-chairs the End-to-End ArchitectureCommittee of the Broadband Forum, which recently honored him as aDistinguished Fellow. Nigel Bragg has spent twenty years in thetelecommunications industry, thirteen of them withNortel where he was elected a Nortel Fellow in2008 before joining Ciena where he works on packet transportand Carrier Ethernet technologies. He holds over thirty patents andis a co-inventor of PBT and PLSB, the pre-standard predecessors ofPBB-TE and SPBM.