A VLAN is a logical broadcast domain that lives on top of a physical switch. The switch can have a hundred ports but be carved into ten broadcast domains - so a broadcast on VLAN 10 reaches only the ports in VLAN 10, not the other ninety. Access ports are the simplest connection to a VLAN: one port, one VLAN, untagged frames. This lab configures three VLANs on a Cisco IOSvL2 switch, assigns access ports to them, and verifies with the canonical show commands.
What you will learn
- How to create VLANs and give them human-readable names
- How to configure an access port and assign it to a VLAN
- The difference between an access port and a trunk port (preview of na-03)
- How to read
show vlan briefand what each column means - The output of
show interfaces switchporton an access port
What this lab does NOT cover
- Trunking - that is the next lab, na-03
- Voice VLANs - covered in na-05
- VLAN database synchronization with VTP - touched on briefly in na-03
Topology
Download the STP+VLAN Reference Lab .yaml
Drop this into CML's Import dialog. Three IOSvL2 switches in a triangle with VLANs 10/20/99, dot1q trunks, rapid-PVST root election, and an LACP EtherChannel between SW1 and SW2.