VLAN

CHAPTER 10: VLAN

The following figure illustrates a VLAN as two separate broadcast domains. The top part of the figure shows two “traditional” Ethernet segments. Up to 32 VLANs can be defined per switch.

SEGMENT 1

SEGMENT 2

CONSOLE

POWER

VLAN 1

VLAN 2

FIGURE 10–1: VLAN as two separate broadcast domains

A group of network users (ports) assigned to a VLAN form a broadcast domain. Packets are forwarded only between ports that are designated for the same VLAN. Cross-domain broadcast traffic in the switch is eliminated and bandwidth is saved by not allowing packets to flood out on all ports. For many reasons a port may be configured to belong to multiple VLANs.

As shown below, ports can belong to multiple VLANs. In this figure, a simplistic view is presented where some ports belong to VLANs 1, 2 and other ports belong to VLANs 2,3. Ports can belong to VLANs 1, 2 and 3. This is not shown in the figure.

SEGMENT 1

SEGMENT 2

SEGMENT 3

 

 

CONSOLE

POWER

VLAN 1

VLAN 2

VLAN 3

 

FIGURE 10–2: Ports assigned to multiple VLANs

By default, on the MultiLink ML1200 Managed Field Switch, VLAN support is enabled and all ports on the switch belong to the default VLAN (DEFAULT-VLAN). This places all ports on the switch into one physical broadcast domain.

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MULTILINK ML1200 MANAGED FIELD SWITCH – INSTRUCTION MANUAL

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GE ML1200 instruction manual Vlan