VLAN , VLAN Tagging how it works

I have limited knowledge within this field so will answer to the best of my abilities:

1: Yes you can, i believe the traffic is controlled by the switches as its switch technology so its the switch that has to handle and control the VLANs

2: you tag ports with the VLAN that the port has access to and so the device that you then connect via this port will have access to the VLAN. so you could tag a switch 50/50 with 2 VLANs, VLAN1 and VLAN2 for example with half the ports of going to each, these device would then be contain to the VLAN that the ports are tagged with. In this instance VLAN1 will be for manager devices and VLAN2 for lower level user devices. the devices are held within the VLANs that they are suited to and as you will wire them meaning there will be no cross talk between the two VLANs so management devices will not see or talk to lower level user devices.

now to add to the mix we have VLAN3, VLAN3 in this example holds the servers with the file servers, mail servers, default gateway etc. VLAN3 has been tagged on every port on the previously mentioned switch. this means that although we have VLAN1 & VLAN2 that are self-contained, we now are allowing both sets of devices access to VLAN3 which holds various servers that both groups need to have access two whilst not having access to one another and keeping the traffic separate so there will be no interactions between the lower level user devices and the management devices unless its through VLAN3 devices.

3: the VLAN traffic will travel through the network fabric you are using as any normal data would, the different being that you have tagged ports and VLANs so the switches route data accordingly there shouldn't be anything special needed between the switch more so then you would normally cable/fibre connect them. but ofcourse the bigger the bandwidth between switches and switches to devices the better.

Hello _Prashant_ ,

1. You can assign multiple VLAN's to a single port. For example, a server can access multiple vlans. Also, all ports are member of VLAN1, the management vlan.

2. You assign vlans to ports, this is the easiest way. You can also assign vlans to MAC addresses, but this is not recommended.

3. VLAN information will be shared among the switches by a vlan management protocol. You can also tag the frames if an edge switch doesn't support vlans.

Best practice: create vlans, assign ports, use vlan switches.

Others have already explained this pretty well above.  If you want additional detail here is a pretty good video on the topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHw7OUqcg-g

Can I assign multiple VLAN to a single port in a switch? If yes then how the traffic will be recongised?

if you have L3 switch then you can create subinterface ..depened upon your vlans.

ex:

int gi0/0

int gi0/0.1
int gi0/0.2
int gi0/0.3
----and soon

at each subinteface you have to define your vlan id with dot1q trunk.

Thanks for the explination,

 I still have some questions.

Say for eg , I have 48 port switch wehre I have defined 0-24 ports are VLAN1 (For Voice) and 25-46(for data) ,

 Now IF I connect the IP Phone to port number 32(which is a dataport) how this will work? I am pretty sure , we need not remember VLAN Ports here?

What is the concept behind this?

Regards,
_Prashant_

If your using traditional IP phones on a cisco switch the following should work to accomplish what you want:  

interface GigabitEthernet32
 switchport access vlan 25
 switchport mode access
 switchport voice vlan 1


The voice vlan option allows for access ports to also carry the voice traffic.  Many times people will run a drop for the phone and then the phone supports a port out to the pc which saves on total number of drops.

There is more configuration that can be done than what is above but you can follow this link for details:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3550/software/release/12.1_19_ea1/configuration/guide/swvoip.html#wp1034062

If you pluf your ip phone into the data vlan the phone will obtain ip address from data subnet.  Everything depends on the subnets configured for each vlan

If it gets the ip address from data VLAN (I belive it will be in Data VLAN) , then how it will contact other IP phones , Since the IP phone will only talk on their VLAN.

Correct me if I am wrong here.

Thanks,

_Prashant_

You need a router or a layer 3 switch to communicated between different vlans (subnets)