A system and method that modifies the behavior of the IEEE 802.1D STP standard to thereby decouple the one data domain from the one control domain involves managing multiple spanning tree protocol (STP) instances in a virtual local area network (VLAN). The method includes the step of assigning a unique set of ports within the VLAN to each of the multiple STP instances. Then, each of the multiple STP instances are managed to keep each of the multiple STP instances separate. Finally, when a topology change is detected in one of the multiple STP instances, entries that have been learned on the unique set of ports assigned to the STP protocol instance where the topology change is detected are fast-aged or transitioned from one state to another.