An interactive tour of the spanning tree protocol

(vincent.bernat.ch)

107 points | by zdw 4 days ago

7 comments

  • EvanAnderson 1 day ago
    It's a nice article and the animations are functional and aesthetically pleasing. I used to teach this on a whiteboard at my local community college. This is much slicker (and involves a lot less scribbling and erasing).

    Spanning tree is an elegant protocol for the constraints it was invented under. Radia Perlman's poem-- particularly the last two stanzas-- also makes me very happy.

    Aside: I enjoy the typographical error in the paragraph under the "Topology change notification" heading:

    When a link fails, a connected fridge reachable...

  • stmw 1 day ago
    Also a good opportunity to read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radia_Perlman in general (she is mentioned in the blog of course).
    • verst 1 day ago
      I met her once in the Bay Area on BART as she was going from the airport to Berkeley to give a lecture (I admit I did not know who she was at the time). We had a nice 1 hour conversation. She's incredibly smart and humble.
  • illamint 1 day ago
    This blog is an unbelievable gold mine of information about networking, Linux, and other concepts. It's what I wish my own blog was in my head, if I could somehow summon the time and creativity.
  • vbernat 1 day ago
    If you like watching the first animation, you can get it for the other diagrams with a well-known video game code.
  • deburo 1 day ago
    Nice! Although not a fan of the sticky animation blocks since they take so much vertical space.
    • bobbob1921 11 hours ago
      I actually think they’re pretty nice even when I was viewing it on a restricted resolution device like an iPad mini, it’s not apparent at first but he does include a check box that allows you to turn off the stickiness of the animations, it’s a few lines or paragraphs below the first animation in the body
  • Hikikomori 1 day ago
    My old enemy.
  • jenders 1 day ago
    Fantastic