A method of generating spanning trees in a network in which a plurality of network nodes are interconnected by links. The spanning trees are utilized for handling link and node failures. For link failures, each link has at least one tree that does not include that link. For node failures, each node has at least one tree to which the node is connected by a single link. A first spanning tree connects all of the nodes, and from each node one link is left unconnected. A second spanning tree includes all of the nodes and all of the unconnected links. Thus, none of the links is included in both trees. If a node failure prevents other nodes from communicating, a third spanning tree is needed. The method minimizes the number of required trees in large networks of any topology and can be implemented off-line.