Switches, ports and links can fail in a switched Ethernet network. When a failure occurs, the switches must be able to recompute the spanning tree to recover from the failure. The `Spanning Tree Protocol` relies on regular transmissions of the `BPDUs` to detect these failures. A `BPDU` contains two additional fields : the `Age` of the `BPDU` and the `Maximum Age`. The `Age` contains the amount of time that has passed since the root switch initially originated the `BPDU`. The root switch sends its `BPDU` with an `Age` of zero and each switch that computes its own `BPDU` increments its `Age` by one. The `Age` of the `BPDUs` stored on a switch's table is also incremented every second. A `BPDU` expires when its `Age` reaches the `Maximum Age`. When the network is stable, this does not happen as `BPDU` s are regularly sent by the `root` switch and downstream switches. However, if the `root` fails or the network becomes partitioned, `BPDU` will expire and switches will recompute their own `BPDU` and restart the `Spanning Tree Protocol`. Once a topology change has been detected, the forwarding of the data frames stops as the topology is not guaranteed to be loop-free. Additional details about the reaction to failures may be found in [IEEE802.1d]_.