In an embodiment, a method is disclosed for operating a network having a group of bridges connected together to form a ring, each bridge having two ports assigned to the ring to form a group of ring ports. The claimed embodiment includes forwarding information through the ring according to one or more spanning tree instances, each instance designating one of the group of ring ports as a respective alternate port that is in a state of discarding. Responsive to learning of a failure by a bridge within the ring, a determination is made, for each spanning tree instance, whether the bridge contains a respective alternate port and if the bridge contains a respective alternate port, changing the state of the respective alternate port to forwarding.