As the organizations grow, the networking needs of the organization also grow. The growth is not only in terms of the capacity, but it also calls for additional requirements. Various projects or departments in the organization have different needs. Some would need extra bandwidth to function properly or some would need isolated networks. Creating VLAN i.e. virtual LAN enables network administrators to fulfill such demands of the organization.
What is VLAN?
VLAN stands for “Virtual Local Area Network”. LAN is a physical network that is established between various devices in the organization. It uses switches, routers, and cables. “Virtual” part refers to the objects or entities which are not present physically but are created through configuration. VLAN allows administrators to create more than one sub-networks on a single physical network. These sub-networks could be configured not to pass any data across or only under conditions.
The isolation is achieved by tagging each packet and the tags are handled by the network devices to decide how should they be routed.
Virtual LAN is of two types:
- Static – in this type, each port on the network switch is configured to be part of the VLAN. Any device that is connected to that port then becomes part of the configured VLAN.
- Dynamic – in this type, the VLAN is created using IDs of the devices such as MAC address. The device then could connect anywhere on the network and could still be part of the VLAN it is configured to be in.
Advantages
- It can improve the overall efficiency of the network. The packets are routed efficiently within the Virtual LAN.
- Isolation enables to add a security layer. So projects or departments needing additional security benefit from this configuration.
- High usage in on Virtual LAN doesn’t affect the performance of rest of the network due to isolation.