Bridge Priority — Cisco CCNA (200-301) Practice Questions
Bridge priority is the primary criterion used by Spanning Tree Protocol to elect the root bridge, with the switch having the numerically lowest priority value winning the election, and ties broken by the lowest MAC address. Cisco switches default to a bridge priority of 32768, but administrators can adjust it in increments of 4096 to influence which switch becomes the root bridge. The CCNA exam tests your ability to configure bridge priority using the spanning-tree vlan command and to predict or troubleshoot root bridge elections given a set of switch priorities and MAC addresses. Proper root bridge placement is a best practice for directing traffic flows and ensuring optimal STP topology, making this a practical as well as conceptual exam topic.