Determining the Root Switch

Determining the STP root switch is easy if you know all the switches’ BIDs: Just pick the lowest value. If the question lists the priority and MAC address separately, as is common in some show command output, pick the switch with the lowest priority, or in the case of a tie, pick the lower MAC address value.

And just to be extra clear, STP does not have nor need a tiebreaker for electing the root switch. The BID uses a switch universal MAC address as the last 48 bits of the BID. These MAC addresses are unique in the universe, so there should never be identical BIDs, with no need for a tiebreaker.

For the exam, a question that asks about the root switch might not be so simple as listing a bunch of BIDs and asking you ...

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