Cisco ENCOR Practice Exam 2025 – All-in-One Comprehensive Guide to Mastering Enterprise Network Core Technologies!

The Common Spanning Tree (CST) protocol is designed to manage the distribution of network traffic across VLANs in a way that ensures there is a loop-free topology. Under CST, all VLANs share a single spanning tree, which means that the topology decision made by the switch is applied to all VLANs uniformly. This approach means that while multiple VLANs can exist within a network, they do not have their own independent spanning tree structures; rather, they conform to a single topology defined by CST.

This design is particularly beneficial in minimizing complexity in the network and simplifying the management of data traffic across different VLANs. If each VLAN were allowed to define its own separate topology, it would introduce complications such as potential loops and inconsistencies that could affect overall network performance.

Although VLAN segmentation allows for logical separation of traffic, the requirement of CST ensures that all traffic passes through a singular, loop-free route within the existing topology constraints. Therefore, the statement that all VLANs must use the same topology is fundamentally accurate in the context of CST.