VigorSwitch G1260 User’s Guide
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others. This helps us configure the network easily according to the criteria needed, for
example, financial, accounting, R&D and whatever you think it necessary. You can also
easily move a user to a different location or join a new user somewhere in the building to
VLAN. Without VLAN, it is very hard to do. Basically, VLAN can afford offering at least
3 benefits: move and change users, reduce broadcast traffic and increase performance,
Security.
Besides, VLAN can highly reduce the traffic congestion and increase total performance
because there are no more too many users in the same broadcast domain.
There are many types of VLAN applied. Most popular is port-based VLAN, tag-based
VLAN and protocol-based VLAN.
Port-based VLAN
Some physical ports are configured as members of a VLAN. All stations attached
on these ports can communicate with each other.
Tag-based VLAN
It identifies the membership by VLAN ID, no matter where the packet comes from.
It is also referred to as 802.1Q VLAN.
Protocol-based VLAN
It identifies the VLAN membership by layer 3 protocol types, for example IPX,
Appletalk, IP, etc.
Other VLAN technologies not mentioned above are MAC-based VLAN, IP-based VLAN
and so on.
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Tagged Frame:
A frame, carrying a tag field following the source MAC address, is
four bytes long and contains VLAN protocol ID and tag control
information composed of user priority, Canonical Format Indicator
(CFI) and optional VLAN identifier (VID). Normally, the maximal
length of a tagged frame is 1522 bytes.
VLAN Protocol ID: 8100 is reserved for VLAN-tagged frame.
User Priority:
3 bits long. User priority is defined to 7 – 0. 0 is the lowest priority.
CFI:
Canonical Format Indicator. 1 bit long. It is used to encapsulate a
token ring packet to let it travel across the Ethernet. Usually, it is set
to 0.
VLAN ID:
12 bits long. 0 means no VLAN ID is present. 1 means default
VLAN, 4095 reserved.
VLAN-tagged frame: An Ethernet frame, carrying VLAN tag field, contains VLAN
identification without the value of 0 and 4095, and priority
information.
Priority-tagged frame: An Ethernet frame, carrying VLAN tag field, contains VLAN
identification with the value of 0 and priority information.