Algorhyme

Wow, I cannot believe I never published this poem before...

It is as old as STP itself, in fact, this is part of the original paper by the very impressive Madam Radia Perlman, known as the author of the protocol. If you never read, the must-read book on STP is this. Unfortunately, it is a print-only book, the only digital edition available is on Safari. As I really don't dig into the Safari format (they charge too much and you never get the full download version in one piece), I won't recommend it. Thus you are left with some badly formatted pirated copy or the physical book. It is a pity they do not review this stupid policy. We are in the decade of all-you-can-download subscriptions, it's time O'Reilly understands this. AAANYWAY, sorry about the rant.

Here follows,

Algorhyme

I think that I shall never see
A graph more lovely than a tree.

A tree whose crucial property
Is loop-free connectivity.

A tree that must be sure to span
So packets can reach every LAN.

First, the root must be selected.
By ID, it is elected.

Least-cost paths from root are traced.
In the tree, these paths are placed.

A mesh is made by folks like me,
Then bridges find a spanning tree.

—Radia Perlman