RSTP outtage times?

[lowbot]

Im going to be enabling rstp soon on some HP 2800 series switches and would like to know the real world downtime when its enabled. How long does the network usually pause? Do all tcp/ip connections get dropped?

If I enable it on one switch, will my entire network pause or will only devices connected to that switch? Does this happen everytime someone plugs something into the switch? Thanks!

 

[jdoebling]

I am familar with 3Com switches and Spanning Tree recovery always seems to take about 20 seconds to reconverge. This is assuming that you have your priorities set properly, descending from your edge switches (highest priority numbers) to the core (the lowest priority number). No matter what the vendor says, its not instantaneous. You would need some sort of redundant loop protocol for that. (RRDP maybe).