What are potential issues with a redundant Layer 2 network design if spanning tree is disabled? (Choose three answers.)

Disabling spanning tree in a redundant Layer 2 network design can lead to several significant issues.

Broadcast storms occur when frames are continuously circulated through the network without a way to be stopped or controlled, which can happen when there are multiple active paths between network switches. Because spanning tree is responsible for preventing loops in the network, its absence means that frames can keep circulating endlessly, leading to excessive broadcast traffic. This overwhelming flow of broadcast packets can saturate the network, affecting the performance of all devices on the network and potentially causing network outages.

In addition to broadcast storms, allowing duplicate frames to be sent across multiple paths is another serious concern. When spanning tree is disabled, there is no mechanism to prevent frames from being duplicated and sent multiple times through different paths, leading to multiple instances of the same frame being received by the destination device. This could cause confusion in the receiving device, as it could process frames out of order or multiple times.

Another critical issue is MAC database instability. Normally, switches learn which MAC addresses are associated with which ports in their forwarding tables. However, without spanning tree in place to prevent loops, the constant arrival of duplicate packets can cause a switch to frequently update its MAC address table. This instability can lead to incorrect frame forwarding