VLAN

Consider the following scenario:

• Your company moves into a new building. Marketing is on the first floor, engineering is on the second floor, operations is on the third floor, and the call center is on the fourth floor. The LAN is organized neatly, with each floor having its own switch. Some groups on the floor are connected through hubs and the network is planned for orderly growth. The company grows faster and much differently than planned, however, and the call center must be expanded. Some engineering employees on the second floor and operations employees on the fourth floor move offsite and the call center expands. Space is compressed and users move to other parts of the building, but their communities of interest do not change. The same users still need to communicate with the same services.

Explain, in a 350- to 700-word plan, how a virtual LAN (VLAN) could be implemented so bandwidth is not consumed. Your plan must ensure that the network is not flooded with packets, and that members of the same VLAN can be located in different buildings or cities.

Include the following:

• The benefit of creating a VLAN
• A plan to segment the network into different broadcast domains to avoid bandwidth consumption
• A plan to improve security
• The type of VLAN membership and the value of that choice over other options
• The type of switch to be used, layer 2 or layer 3, and why you would choose it over the other
• The types of trunking configured on the switch
• The purpose and benefit of using the VLAN trunk protocol (VTP)
• A definition of the VTP mode used to configure the switches
• Backup plan