LevelOne GSW-2600TXM 4.3.1.Assigning Ports to VLANs

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routing.

An IEEE 802.1Q VLAN is a group of ports that can be located anywhere in the network,

but communicate as though they belong to the same physical segment. VLANs help to

simplify network management by allowing you to move devices to a new VLAN without

having to change any physical connections. VLANs can be easily organized to reflect

departmental groups (such as Marketing or R&D), usage groups (such as e-mail), or

multicast groups (used for multimedia applications such as videoconferencing).

VLANs provide greater network efficiency by reducing broadcast traffic, and allow you to

make network changes without having to update IP addresses or IP subnets. VLANs

inherently provide a high level of network security since traffic must pass through a

configured Layer 3 link to reach a different VLAN.

This switch supports the following VLAN features:

• Up to 256 VLANs based on the IEEE 802.1Q standard

• Distributed VLAN learning across multiple switches using explicit or implicit tagging

and GVRP protocol

• Port overlapping, allowing a port to participate in multiple VLANs

• End stations can belong to multiple VLANs

• Passing traffic between VLAN-aware and VLAN-unaware devices

• Priority tagging

4.3.1.Assigning Ports to VLANs

Before enabling VLANs for the switch, you must first assign each port to the VLAN

group(s) in which it will participate (chapter 2 “VLAN Table Configuration”). By default all

ports are assigned to VLAN 1 as untagged ports. Add a port as a tagged port (that is, a

port attached to a VLAN-aware device) if you want it to carry traffic for one or more

VLANs and if the device at the other end of the link also supports VLANs (chapter 2

“Configuring Virtual LANs” and chapter 3 “Configuring Virtual LANs”). Then assign the

port at the other end of the link to the same VLAN(s). However, if you want a port on this

switch to participate in one or more VLANs, but the device at the other end of the link

does not support VLANs, then you must add this port as an untagged port (that is, a

port attached to a VLAN-unaware device).

When the switch receives a frame, it classifies the frame in one of two ways. If the

frame is untagged, the switch assigns the frame to an associated VLAN (based on the

PVID of the receiving port (chapter 2 “VLAN Port Configuration” and chapter 3 “VLAN

Port Configuration”). But if the frame is tagged, the switch uses the tagged VLAN ID to

identify the port broadcast domain of the frame.