ZyXEL Communications Plumbing Product metrogigabit switch User Manual

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MGS3700-12C User’s Guide
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9  
VLAN
The type of screen you see here depends on the VLAN Type you selected in the 
Switch Setup screen. This chapter shows you how to configure 802.1Q tagged 
and port-based VLANs. 
9.1  Introduction to IEEE 802.1Q Tagged VLANs  
A tagged VLAN uses an explicit tag (VLAN ID) in the MAC header to identify the 
VLAN membership of a frame across bridges - they are not confined to the switch 
on which they were created. The VLANs can be created statically by hand or 
dynamically through GVRP. The VLAN ID associates a frame with a specific VLAN 
and provides the information that switches need to process the frame across the 
network. A tagged frame is four bytes longer than an untagged frame and 
contains two bytes of TPID (Tag Protocol Identifier, residing within the type/length 
field of the Ethernet frame) and two bytes of TCI (Tag Control Information, starts 
after the source address field of the Ethernet frame). 
The CFI (Canonical Format Indicator) is a single-bit flag, always set to zero for 
Ethernet switches. If a frame received at an Ethernet port has a CFI set to 1, then 
that frame should not be forwarded as it is to an untagged port. The remaining 
twelve bits define the VLAN ID, giving a possible maximum number of 4,096 
VLANs. Note that user priority and VLAN ID are independent of each other. A 
frame with VID (VLAN Identifier) of null (0) is called a priority frame, meaning that 
only the priority level is significant and the default VID of the ingress port is given 
as the VID of the frame. Of the 4096 possible VIDs, a VID of 0 is used to identify 
priority frames and value 4095 (FFF) is reserved, so the maximum possible VLAN 
configurations are 4,094. 
TPID
2 Bytes
User Priority 
3 Bits
CFI
1 Bit
VLAN ID
12 bits