During Interop 2014 SPB was used as the backbone protocol which can enable software-defined networking (SDN) functionalities. In 20 SPB was used to build the InteropNet backbone with only one-tenth the resources of prior years.

During the games this fabric network could handle up to 54 Tbit/s of traffic. The 2014 Winter Olympics were the first 'fabric-enabled' Games using SPB 'IEEE 802.1aq' technology. In May 2013, the first public multi-vendor interoperability was demonstrated as SPB served as the backbone for Interop 2013 in Las Vegas.

In 2012, David Allan and Nigel Bragg said in 802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging Design and Evolution: The Architect's Perspective that shortest path bridging is one of the most significant enhancements in Ethernet's history. In March 2012 the IEEE approved the 802.1aq standard. In December 2011, SPB was evaluated by the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) and approved for deployment within the US Department of Defense (DoD) because of the ease in integrated OA&M and interoperability with current protocols. On 4 March 2006 the working group posted 802.1aq draft 0.1. 2.1.2 IS-IS Hello (IIH) Protocol Extensions.The control plane is based on the Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS) routing protocol, leveraging a small number of extensions defined in RFC 6329. Unicast, multicast, and broadcast are supported and all routing is on symmetric shortest paths. Packets are encapsulated at the edge either in media access control-in-media access control ( MAC-in-MAC) 802.1ah or tagged 802.1Q/ 802.1ad frames and transported only to other members of the logical network.

The technology provides logical Ethernet networks on native Ethernet infrastructures using a link state protocol to advertise both topology and logical network membership. It is designed to virtually eliminate human error during configuration and preserves the plug-and-play nature that established Ethernet as the de facto protocol at layer 2. These blocked any redundant paths that could result in a layer 2 loop, whereas SPB allows all paths to be active with multiple equal cost paths, provides much larger layer 2 topologies, supports faster convergence times, and improves the efficiency by allowing traffic to load share across all paths of a mesh network. It is the replacement for the older spanning tree protocols: IEEE 802.1D, IEEE 802.1w, IEEE 802.1s.

Shortest Path Bridging ( SPB), specified in the IEEE 802.1aq standard, is a computer networking technology intended to simplify the creation and configuration of networks, while enabling multipath routing.

Spb protocol