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18CHAPTER 1: SWITCH FEATURES OVERVIEW
VLANs A Virtual LAN (VLAN) is a flexible group of devices that can be located anywhere in a network, but which communicate as if they are on the same physical segment. With VLANs, you can segment your network without being restricted by physical connections — a limitation of traditional network design. As an example, with VLANs you can segment your network according to:
■Departmental groups
■Hierarchical groups
■Usage groups
For more information about VLANs, see Chapter 8 “Setting Up Virtual
LANs”.