Virtual Lan Paper

Virtual LAN Paper

Implementing a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) can be beneficial in a company. VLAN is a set of hosts attached with the same wire, it uses common requirements that will allow communication, and it will work regardless of where each site is located. A VLAN uses the same characteristics as a traditional LAN but for a VLAN it does not matter where workstations are located, they can be grouped as one LAN. The configuration of this type of network can be done through the software that help interconnecting rather than going to every location and configuring hardware or relocate devices.

The benefit of creating a VLAN

In a VLAN there are several benefits than can help save money and improve productivity. One of the benefits is that it can have lower levels of bandwidth consumption, performance will be enhanced due to lower bandwidth use, information security can be handled in single controlled manner, workgroups can be added, removed, or modified from a single point of location, and one of the last benefits is that it will be easy to manage for the same reason that is in one location and all information technology staff can be trained (Homan, N.D).

Broadcasting domains to avoid bandwidth consumption

In a VLAN in order to avoid bandwidth consumption one can convert a single domain broadcast into multiple domains. Traditional LAN's are focused on the equipment and personnel that are in a current location, there are latency issues when transferring data and information with users from another site. A solution for this type of issues can be fixed using multiple domains broadcast in a VLAN. Bandwidth usage for data and information transfer in a VLAN is minimal; it does not have to go through many segments of the network in order to get to the other end. In addition when having a properly configured VLAN, devices can be defined to be the only ones to receive or forward packets. These are some reasons why using different domains will definitely help because for each department or location one domain name can be assigned in order to define their specific tasks (VLAN, N.D).

A plan to improve security.

Improving security for any type of network can be quite challenging. In the current setup there are four different departments known. Having four different domains can help in the security, for each one location access will be restricted to the other site or department. Access to each individual can always be managed in network access as we as in active directory. Depending on what the operator needs access the administrator can create different types of groups for every domain in every site or department (VLAN, N.D).

VLAN membership

The membership that can be useful for this environment will be port assigned. In this type of VLAN membership the administrator can define what each port the VLAN belongs to, for example ports 1-2 can be VLAN 1, ports 3-4 can be VLAN 2, and so on. The port membership can help in the event that any of the other locations or departments are relocated it will only take a new configuration to accept the domain from the new site. The most important benefit of the port membership is that it can be centrally modified and it will take only a few steps and