Static vs Dynamic VLANs

All About VLAN Memberships

The administrator create LANs and also assign switch ports to every VLAN. This type of VLAN is referred to as static VLAN . If the administrator is ready to put little more effort then he can assign hardware addresses to all the host devices in a database, in order to assign VLANs vitally the switches can be configured every time a host is connected/plugged into a switch.  

What are Static VLANs?

Usually VLANs are created with the help of static VLANs, and the best part is that they are quite safe and secure. The change in switch port assigned to VLAN can be done manually by an administrator only otherwise it remains the same. It is quite easy to set up and monitor this kind of VLAN configuration as compared to others, it performs well in a network environment where it is possible to control the movement of users within the network. In order to configure the ports it is best to make use of network management software. In the figure you can see that the administrator has configured each switch port with a VLAN membership which depends on which VLAN the host wanted the membership—it does not matter where the device is actually and physically located. Also the broadcast domaining the hosts will become a member as per the choice of administrator. Keep in mind that every host must have correct and authentic information of IP address. Here is an example that configuration of each host in VLAN 2 must be into the 172.16.20.0/24 network. Another important thing to remember is that, when you are plugging a host into a switch, then the VLAN membership verification of that port becomes essential. If the membership does not match with the one that is needed for the particular host, then it won’t be possible for the host to reach the desired network services, like a workgroup server.

An eye on dynamic VLANs

A dynamic VLAN, on the other hand can automatically find out a node’s VLAN assignment. If you use an efficient management software, then it is possible to enable hardware (MAC) addresses, applications, protocols in order to build dynamic VLANs. The choice is simply yours! For instance, we enter the MAC addresses into the application of centralized VLAN management. Now if a node is connected to switch port, that is not assigned then the database of the VLAN management can check out the hardware address configure as we assign the switch port to the relevant VLAN. This has made things easier as when the user is on the move then the management and configuration becomes easy because the switch will automatically assign them to the right VLAN. But in order to enjoy this benefit it requires a lot more work at an early stage when the database is being set up. With the use of VLAN Management Policy Server (VMPS) service the cisco administrators can easily set up a MAC addresses database which in turn can be utilized for dynamic VLANs addressing. The mapping of  MAC addresses to VLANs is done by VMPS database.

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One Response

  1. Rui Marques June 19, 2018

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