ZyXEL Communications VSG1432-B101 Series User Manual

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Chapter 6 Broadband
VSG1432-B101 Series User’s Guide
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In Multi-Tenant Unit (MTU) applications, VLAN is vital in providing isolation and 
security among the subscribers. When properly configured, VLAN prevents one 
subscriber from accessing the network resources of another on the same LAN, 
thus a user will not see the printers and hard disks of another user in the same 
building. 
VLAN also increases network performance by limiting broadcasts to a smaller and 
more manageable logical broadcast domain. In traditional switched environments, 
all broadcast packets go to each and every individual port. With VLAN, all 
broadcasts are confined to a specific broadcast domain. 
Introduction to IEEE 802.1Q Tagged VLAN 
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