Dell N2000 Series, Configuration Manual

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Configuring VLANs
651
Double-VLAN Tagging
For trunk ports, which are ports that connect one switch to another switch,
the Dell Networking series switches support double-VLAN tagging. This
feature allows service providers to create Virtual Metropolitan Area Networks
(VMANs). With double-VLAN tagging, service providers can pass VLAN
traffic from one customer domain to another through a metro core in a
simple and cost-effective manner. By using an additional tag on the traffic,
the switch can differentiate between customers in the MAN while preserving
an individual customer’s VLAN identification when the traffic enters the
customer’s 802.1Q domain.
With the introduction of this second tag, customers are no longer required to
divide the 4-byte VLAN ID space to send traffic on a Ethernet-based MAN.
In short, every frame that is transmitted from an interface has a double-VLAN
tag attached, while every packet that is received from an interface has a tag
removed (if one or more tags are present).
In Figure 21-2, two customers share the same metro core. The service
provider assigns each customer a unique ID so that the provider can
distinguish between the two customers and apply different rules to each.
When the configurable EtherType is assigned to something different than the
802.1Q (0x8100) EtherType, it allows the traffic to have added security from
misconfiguration while exiting the metro core. For example, if the edge
device on the other side of the metro core is not stripping the second tag, the
packet would never be classified as a 802.1Q tag, so the packet would be
dropped rather than forwarded in the incorrect VLAN.