VLAN
When setting up a VLAN you have to look at the benefit of having a VLAN. The benefits of creating a VLAN are flexibility, performance improvement, and savings on cost. With flexibility you can move users to new locations without reconfiguring the system. The VLAN improves performance by segmenting broadcast traffic into port groupings, this helps to preserve network bandwidth and save processor time. The last benefit is cost savings; VLANs will eliminate the need to use routers to partition LANs into multiple broadcast domains, thus reducing hardware costs.

Let’s look at the security aspect of a VLAN; one way to improve security with the VLAN is by isolating groups. High-security users can be grouped into a VLAN, possibly on the same segment, and no users outside that VLAN can communicate with those users. Using a VLAN membership that is port assigned based will be used to help future reorganization of the physical layout of the network. This will help if there is relocation or reallocation since there will be a centralized administration of the network and the users of the network. This choice will provide for simpler administration than MAC address, User ID, or Network address VLAN membership when it comes to the placement and changing the personnel assignment of the groups (Regan, 2004).

Now let’s talk about layers. You would think that since VLANs are created on Layer 2 switches that this would be the best layer to utilize, but using the layer 3 switch offers greater control of the network. Layer 2 switches would not be as efficient control of the network or the speed of network operations. The type of trunking protocol that would be used is the IEEE 802.1Q protocol. This protocol is used to interconnect multiple switches and routers and for defining VLAN topologies. It will reduce the dependency on any single vendor for the hardware that is used, since the protocol is not proprietary. What this will also do is it will allow for a cost effective expansion in the future. The main purpose of a VTP is to provide a facility by which individual Cisco routers can be managed as a group for VLAN configuration purposes. The main benefit of a VTP is that an administrator can manage those routers as a group instead of doing them individually, in which, this would not be a time consuming process. The way that the VTP mode could configure switches must be done in two ways, at least one VTP server and VTP client. The VTP server mode is used to configure the VLAN and the VTP. If there are any changes to be made it must be done in the VTP server mode, in which, the changes will go to the switch in server mode and all other clients.

Lastly, the backup plan, backing up the VLAN has to be on point in case of VLAN fault or outages. The network should be able to run off of a star topology till the VLAN is back running properly. The way that this could be done is to implement backing up those files every week and keep them off site in another location.

This paper was to show how to implement a VLAN into a network. The VLAN for this network will increase the resources of the company. It will also be able to run without consuming bandwidth in future expansion of the company, and it will also reduce the time that it takes configure each switch since it can be done in groups.

References http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=29803 http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/virtual-networking/virtual-networks.html http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/lanswitch/configuration/guide/lsw_rtng_vlan_ovw_ps6350_TSD_Products_Configuration_Guide_Chapter.html#wp1003690 Regan, P. (2004). Wide area networks. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.