an apparatus and method for controlling bridge protocol data unit bursts is disclosed . the invention in the preferred embodiment is a switching device with a port enabled with a link management protocol and a burst control state machine . the burst control state machine is adapted to receive bpdus and , under certain conditions , delay responding with its own bpdu falsely advertising itself as the new root bridge . the delay is preferably long enough to enable another bridge to identity the true root bridge . the delay , e . g ., a burst control delay , is preferably equal to or less than a hello time timer value generally defined to be 2 seconds in a rapid spanning tree protocol standard , for example .