User's Manual

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15.2 GVRP Configuration
15.2.1 Introduction to GVRP
GVRP, i.e. GARP VLAN Registration Protocol, is an application of GARP (Generic Attribute Registration
Protocol). GARP is mainly used to establish an attribute transmission mechanism to transmit attributes, so as
to ensure protocol entities registering and deregistering the attribute. According to different transmission
attributes, GARP can be divided to many application protocols, such as GMRP and GVRP. Therefore, GVRP
is a protocol which transmits VLAN attributes to the whole layer 2 network through GARP protocol.
Figure 15-4 a typical application scene
A and G switches are not directly connected in layer 2 network; BCDEF are intermediate switches connecting
A and G. Switch A and G configure VLAN100-1000 manually while BCDEF switches do not. When GVRP is
not enabled, A and G cannot communicate with each other, because intermediate switches without relevant
VLANs. However, after GVRP is enabled on all switches, its VLAN attribute transmission mechanism enables
the intermediate switches registering the VLANs dynamically, and the VLAN in VLAN100-1000 of A and G can
communicate with each other. The VLANs dynamically registered by intermediate switches will be
deregistered when deregistering VLAN100-1000 of A and G switches manually. So the same VLAN of two
unadjacent switches can communicate mutually through GVRP protocol instead of configuring each
intermediate switch manually for achieving the purpose of simplifying VLAN configuration.