Chapter 7 Interfaces

This approach provides a few advantages.

•Increased performance - In VLAN 2, the extra switch should route traffic inside the sales department faster than the router does. In addition, broadcasts are limited to smaller, more logical groups of users.

•Higher security - If each computer has a separate physical connection to the switch, then broadcast traffic in each VLAN is never sent to computers in another VLAN.

•Better manageability - You can align network policies more appropriately for users. For example, you can set different bandwidth limits for each VLAN. These rules are also independent of the physical network, so you can change the physical network without changing policies.

In this example, the new switch handles the following types of traffic:

•Inside VLAN 2.

•Between the router and VLAN 1.

•Between the router and VLAN 2.

•Between the router and VLAN 3.

VLAN Interfaces Overview

In the ZyWALL, each VLAN is called a VLAN interface. As a router, the ZyWALL routes traffic between VLAN interfaces, but it does not route traffic within a VLAN interface. All traffic for each VLAN interface can go through only one Ethernet interface, though each Ethernet interface can have one or more VLAN interfaces.

Note: Each VLAN interface is created on top of only one Ethernet interface.

Otherwise, VLAN interfaces are similar to other interfaces in many ways. They have an IP address, subnet mask, and gateway used to make routing decisions. They restrict bandwidth and packet size. They can provide DHCP services, and they can verify the gateway is available.

7.7.1 VLAN Summary Screen

This screen lists every VLAN interface and virtual interface created on top of VLAN interfaces. If you enabled IPv6 in the Configuration > System > IPv6 screen, you can also configure VLAN interfaces used for your IPv6 networks on this screen. To access this screen, click Configuration >

Network > Interface > VLAN.

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ZyWALL 110/310/1100 Series User’s Guide