IE-SW-VL08M Series User’s Manual
Featured Functions
3-47
with VLANs you can segment your network according to:
y
Departmental groups
—You could have one VLAN for the Marketing department, another for
the Finance department, and another for the Development department.
y
Hierarchical groups
—You could have one VLAN for directors, another for managers, and
another for general staff.
y
Usage groups
—You could have one VLAN for e-mail users, and another for multimedia users.
Benefits of VLANs
The main benefit of VLANs is that they provide a network segmentation system that is far more
flexible than traditional networks. Using VLANs also provides you with three other benefits:
y
VLANs ease the relocation of devices on networks:
With traditional networks, network
administrators spend much of their time dealing with moves and changes. If users move to a
different subnetwork, the addresses of each host must be updated manually. With a VLAN
setup, if a host on VLAN
Marketing,
for example, is moved to a port in another part of the
network, and retains its original subnet membership, you only need to specify that the new port
is on VLAN
Marketin
g. You do not need to do any re-cabling.
y
VLANs provide extra security:
Devices within each VLAN can only communicate with other
devices on the same VLAN. If a device on VLAN
Marketing
needs to communicate with
devices on VLAN
Financ
e, the traffic must pass through a routing device or Layer 3 switch.
y
VLANs help control traffic:
With traditional networks, congestion can be caused by broadcast
traffic that is directed to all network devices, regardless of whether or not they need it. VLANs
increase the efficiency of your network because each VLAN can be set up to contain only those
devices that need to communicate with each other.
VLANs and Weidmueller Industrial Ethernet Switch’s
Your IE-SW-VL08M provides support for VLANs using IEEE Std 802.1Q-1998. This standard
allows traffic from multiple VLANs to be carried across one physical link. The IEEE Std
802.1Q-1998 standard allows each port on your device to be placed in:
y
Any one VLAN defined on the IE-SW-VL08M.
y
Several VLANs at the same time using 802.1Q tagging.
The standard requires that you define the
802.1Q VLAN ID
for each VLAN on your IE-SW-VL08M
before the switch can use it to forward traffic:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Switch A
Switch B
Backbone connects multiple switches
Department 1
VLAN 1
Department 2
VLAN 2
Department 3
VLAN 3
