A Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) domain comprising a plurality of Ethernet switches interconnected by physical links, wherein at least two of the plurality of Ethernet switches comprise ports defined as Layer 2 Gateway Ports (L2GPs), wherein the at least two Ethernet switches comprising a first L2GP and a second L2GP, respectively, are configured to have emulated connections to the same pseudo root outside the STP domain by means of a first emulated connection and a second emulated connection, respectively, and each of L2GPs is configured with a root path cost from the respective Ethernet switch to the pseudo root, wherein the root path cost of the first L2GPs differs from the root path cost of the second L2GP to only keep one of the first emulated connection and the second emulated connection open towards the pseudo root, wherein the L2GPs of the Ethernet switches are configured to be assigned with the same pseudo root identity to achieve the emulated connections from the L2GPs to the same pseudo root, wherein the root path cost of the L2GP is a function of the bandwidth of an associated physical link or physical link aggregation group.