Spanning tree needs to be disabled on the looped ports. The VLANs will need to be configured as T for the uplink port and – for the looped ports in the comm vlan. Note: the loop connection should be connected after switch 1 is fully configured. In this setup port 10 is being mirrored to port 6, port 6 is looped back to port 7 on VLAN 10, (it is important to turn RSTP off on ports 6 and 7 of switch 1), VLAN 10 is then forwarded across the uplinks to switch 3 port 11 where the mirrored packets can be monitored. Switch 1 will be the switch that is doing the port mirroring.

If the network is larger than 3 switches us the SW2 configuration in all the switches between the start and end switches. The configurations can be used in a 2 switch RSPAN network using SW1 and SW3 switch configurations. This guide is designed to assist in the configuration of RSPAN on the layer 2 switches.