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Catalyst 6500 Series Switch Cisco IOS Software Configuration Guide—Release 12.1 E
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Configuring VTP
This chapter describes how to configure the VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) on the Catalyst 6500 series
switches.
Note For complete syntax and usage information for the commands used in this chapter, refer to the
Catalyst 6500 Series Switch Cisco IOS Command Reference publication.
This chapter consists of these sections:
Understanding How VTP Works, page 8-1
VTP Default Configuration, page 8-5
VTP Configuration Guidelines and Restrictions, page 8-5
Configuring VTP, page 8-6

Understanding How VTP Works

VTP is a Layer 2 messaging protocol that maintains VLAN configuration consistency by managing the
addition, deletion, and renaming of VLANs within a VTP domain. A VTP domain (also called a VLAN
management domain) is made up of one or more network devices that share the same VTP domain name
and that are interconnected with trunks. VTP minimizes misconfigurations and configuration
inconsistencies that can result in a number of problems, such as duplicate VLAN names, incorrect
VLAN-type specifications, and security violations. Before you create VLANs, you must decide whether
to use VTP in your network. With VTP, you can make configuration changes centrally on one or more
network devices and have those changes automatically communicated to all the other network devices
in the network.
Note For complete information on configuring VLANs, see Chapter 9, “Configuring VLANs.”
These sections describe how VTP works:
Understanding the VTP Domain, page 8-2
Understanding VTP Modes, page 8-2
Understanding VTP Advertisements, page 8-2
Understanding VTP Version 2, page 8-3
Understanding VTP Pruning, page 8-3