3Com 9100 manual VLANs help to control traffic, VLANs provide extra security

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VIRTUAL LANS (VLANS)

Setting up Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) on the switch eases many time-consuming tasks of network administration while increasing efficiency in network operations.

This chapter describes the concept of VLANs and explains how to implement VLANs on the switch.

Overview of Virtual The term “VLAN” is used to refer to a collection of devices that

LANscommunicate as if they were on the same physical LAN. Any set of ports (including all ports on the switch) is considered a VLAN. LAN segments are not restricted by the hardware that physically connects them. The segments are defined by flexible user groups you create with the command-line interface.

Benefits Implementing VLANs on your networks has the following advantages:

■VLANs help to control traffic.

With traditional networks, congestion can be caused by broadcast traffic that is directed to all network devices, regardless of whether they require it. VLANs increase the efficiency of your network because each VLAN can be set up to contain only those devices that must communicate with each other.

■VLANs provide extra security.

Devices within each VLAN can only communicate with member devices in the same VLAN. If a device in VLAN Marketing must communicate with devices in VLAN Sales, the traffic must cross a routing device.