Virtual LAN

Chapter 14
Chapter Objectives

 Explain Virtual LAN

 Explain VLAN trunking
 Explain VLAN trunking protocol
 Configure and Troubleshooting VLAN

Chapter 12 2
Recall - I
 LAN switching increases the bandwidth of the
network, which helps to solve the problem of
network traffic
 Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is used to stop the
network loop that occurs for an indefinite period on
the layer 2 network
 The Cisco Catalyst 1900 series switches are
available in two editions Standard Edition and
Enterprise Editions

Chapter 12 3
Recall - II
 The 1900 series switches automatically copies any
changes made in the configuration into the NVRAM.
In the 1900 switches, any changes made to the
running configuration using the mode is
automatically updated in the NVRAM config file
 The Standard version of Catalyst 2900 provides
VLAN capability
 The 2900 series switches come with four and eight
megabytes of memory size

Chapter 12 4
Virtual LAN (VLAN)
 A VLAN is a group of network devices that behave
as they are connected to a single network segment

Chapter 12 5
VLAN Advantages
 Broadcast Control - This helps in reducing the
bandwidth consumption in the network
 Security - VLANs allow you to efficiently control the
switch ports, which prevent unauthorized access of
the network by the use of a switch port
 Flexibility and Scalability - VLAN are considered as
flexible because it allows you to construct groups or
networks connected to a switch or a group of
switches

Chapter 12 6
VLAN Membership
 VLAN membership can be defined as the
association of the devices in a VLAN and how the
devices are configured in the VLAN
 The two types of VLAN membership include:
 Static VLANs

 Dynamic VLANs

Chapter 12 7
VLAN Trunking
 When a particular VLAN switch sends a broadcast
message to another switch on the network, the
receiving switch needs to identify the source of the
message. This is achieved by VLAN trunking
 VLAN trunking adds a tag to each data frame that is
transferred from the switch

Chapter 12 8
Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Protocol
 The Inter-Switch Link protocol allows tagging of the
data frame before transferring it to a VLAN
 The ISL encapsulates the original by placing the
original Ethernet frame between the 26-byte header
and the 4-byte CRC trailer frame

Chapter 12 9
802.1Q
 The 802.1Q modifies the original frame by adding a
4 byte field called the tag field in the middle of the
original Ethernet frame

Chapter 12 10
Trunking
 Trunking is used to communicate when the two or
more hosts are connected to a different switch and
belong to the same VLAN
 Before configuring the ports, you must know the
network structure

Chapter 12 11
Inter-VLAN Routing
 Router Interfaces Connected to the Access Link

 Router Interface Connected to the Switch

Chapter 12 12
VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP)
 VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) allows you to share
information about VLAN configuration over the
network switches
 VTP allows to add a new VLAN to the switch and
propagate this information through the VTP
messages to all other switches in layer 2 network
causing them to add the new VLAN
 VTP propagates information as VTP messages
using trunk connections

Chapter 12 13
VTP Modes
 VTP modes decide the flexibility with which changes
are incorporated in the network
 The three VTP modes include:
 Server Mode

 Transparent Mode

 Client Mode

Chapter 12 14
VTP Prunning
 VTP pruning is Cisco VTP feature that allows your
switches to dynamically delete or add VLANs to a
trunk resulting in a more efficient switching network
 The VTP pruning helps the switch to prevent
broadcast and unicasts from flowing into switches
that do not have ports in that VLAN

Chapter 12 15
Case Study
The Gujarat branch of the Blue Diamond Steel
Company has hired new employees for Finance,
Marketing, Human Resource and Business
Development departments. This made the
management to expand their office premises. The new
employees are placed in the new premises. The
network administrator has already configured VLANs
for every department and now has to assign the
VLANs to the new hosts, so that the new employees
can access the data of their department from the new
premises.

Chapter 12 16
Problem

The network administrator is unable to assign the

VLANs automatically to the hosts connected and
assigning VLANs to each host manually is a
tedious task

Chapter 12 17
Suggested Solution

The network administrator needs to configure VTP on

the new network switch and the switch to which the
new network switch will be connected. He needs to
enable trunking between the VLANs. In addition, he
needs to assign the VLANs to the same domain

Chapter 12 18
Summary - I

 Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) is a collection of

networking devices in the same broadcast domain
 In order to work with a VLAN, you require a layer of 2
switches that supports them
 Each VLAN created on a switch is a separate network
 Network broadcast, by default, are filtered from all
ports on a switch that are not members of the same
VLAN
 VLANs help to isolate network segments between
each other

Chapter 12 19
Summary - II

 In VLAN trunking, the switches tag each frame sent

between switches so that the receiving switch knows
what to what VLAN frame belongs
 With trunking you can support multiple VLANs that
have on more than one switch
 Cisco supports two different trunking protocols;
Inter-Switch (ISL) and IEEE 802.1Q, both provide
basic trunking
 The ISL can be used only between two Cisco
switches

Chapter 12 20
Summary - III

 The ISL is a proprietary tagging method that the

Cisco developed to use for Ethernet and Token ring
connections
 The ISL header VLAN fields provide a place to
encode the VLAN number
 ISL is used only on Ethernet connection
 The ISL adds a 26-byte header and 4-byte trailer to
the original Ethernet frame
 The ISL is slowly being replaced in Cisco’s products
with IEEE’s 802.1Q trunking standard

Chapter 12 21
Summary - IV
 The 802.1Q allows trunks between different
vendor’s devices, whereas ISL provided only
trunking between some of the Cisco devices
 Cisco 2950 switches use a slightly different
configuration mode to configure VLAN and VTP
information as compared to other switch
configuration commands
 In VLAN configuration mode, you can configure
VLAN information as VTP settings. By default, a
2950 switch uses VTP server mode, so any VLANs
you configure are advertised in VTP updates

Chapter 12 22