The IEEE 802.1D standard was designed at a time when the recovery of connectivity after an outage within a minute or so was considered adequate performance. In the IEEE 802.1D Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) , recovery takes around 50 seconds, which includes 20 seconds for the Max Age timer to expire and then an additional 30 seconds for the port to transition from the Blocking state to the Forwarding state. As computer technology evolved, and networks became more critical, it became apparent that more rapid network convergence was required. Cisco addressed this requirement by developing some proprietary enhancements to STP that included Backbone Fast and Uplink Fast. With the continued evolution of technology and the amalgamation of routing and switching capabilities on the same physical platform, it soon became apparent that switched network convergence lagged behind that of routing protocols, such as OSPF and EIGRP, which are able to provide an alternate path in less time. The 802.1w standard was designed to address this. The IEEE 802.1w standard, or Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP), significantly reduces the time taken for STP to converge when a link failure occurs. With RSTP, network failover to an alternate path or link can occur in a sub-second timeframe. RSTP is an extension of 802.1D that performs similar functions to Uplink Fast and Backbone Fast. RSTP performs better than traditional STP, with no additional configuration. Additionally, RSTP is backward compatible with the original IEEE 802.1D STP standard.