Gigabit Ethernet Switch Management Guide

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4-3
The following figure gives an illustration of how the Spanning Tree
Algorithm assigns bridging device ports.
Virtual LANs
Switches do not inherently support broadcast domains, which can
lead to broadcast storms in large networks that handle a lot of IPX or
NetBeui traffic. In conventional networks with routers, broadcast
traffic is split up into physically separate domains to confine broadcast
traffic to the originating group and provide a much cleaner network
environment. This switch creates segregated broadcast domains based
on easily configurable VLANs, these are then linked, as required, via a
router or Layer 3 switch.
An IEEE 802.1Q VLAN is a group of ports that can be located
anywhere in the network, but communicate as though they belong to
the same physical segment. VLANs help to simplify network
management by allowing you to move devices to a new VLAN
without having to change any physical connections. VLANs can be
easily organized to reflect departmental groups (such as Marketing or
R&D), usage groups (such as e-mail), or multicast groups (used for
multimedia applications such as video conferencing).
VLANs provide greater network efficiency by reducing broadcast