It 242 - Virtual Local Area Networks

VLAN

IT/242

03 February 2013

VLAN

Virtual Local Area Networks (VLAN) are beneficial because they improve security and bandwidth consumption. The call center has expanded taking up space on other floors causing part of the Engineering department and the Operations department to move offsite. All of the departments still need to be connected so that their data is still accessible to each other despite the expansion. A VLAN will allow these employees to continue to connectivity with their groups and any shared services and security from the physical LAN. Members will have the freedom to move from one group or area to another with the help from software versus having to physically move workstations, wires, or any other devices.

Originally, the traditional methods of a LAN were used because each department was separated on different floors. Since, the call center employees have moved to the other floors occupied by the other departments, security issues could be likely to arise as well as bandwidth issues. This can happen because now all the departments can see the call center’s transmissions as well as the transmissions from the other departments that have moved offsite. By implementing a VLAN, different domains can avoid bandwidth consumption because the network is split into different segments and then divided into different groups; every group or department will have its own segment, which will greatly reduce the bandwidth consumption. Creating group permissions will ensure that department will only be able to access the information that they have access to, reducing security issues.

A port assigned VLAN membership should be used. Administrators can easily change configurations by using the port assigned protocol.