I may be doing this wrong but I setup an RB493AH as a switch. I created a bridge and then added all ports to that bridge. I then opened the settings for the bridge and selected RSTP. I changed nothing else. Should this have stopped a network loop? Because it didn't. I had a backhaul plugged into the switch and during the storm it brought down other backhauls plugged into the same switch. While this was going I tried STP instead of RSTP and it still did not stop the other backhauls from going down. Am I missing a step? This RB is running 4.2.

Thanks

Ok I've been reading all day and possibly confusing myself further. I've discovered on this particular RB switch there is no root port. When I monitor it it says root port none. I have other RB's of the same model and software version that all have root ports. Is this my problem? Why is there no root port being selected? I also noticed in my other RB's that are used as switches the root port is selecting the port that goes upstream through my backhaul. How does it know to do this?

Hi,

When you monitor the bridge interface does it say 'root-bridge: yes'? If so, there's no root port because the RB493 is the root bridge of the spanning tree network.

The other switches 'automagically' know the upstream links are root ports because a device higher up in the chain (root bridge) is configured with a higher priority (lower number) than the switch at the site. Read this Wikipedia entry on Spanning Tree Protocol for more information.

If you don't want your RB493 acting as the root then you'll want to raise its STP priority from the MikroTik default of 32768. You probably need to evaluate your entire network topology and possibly adjust spanning tree along all STP participating bridges in order to achieve a proper forwarding hierarchy back to the root bridge.