PVLAN Reference

[cstierle]

Can anyone point me to a good PVLAN reference. I know how to configure them and how they work at a high level but I am having difficulty finding any in-depth whitepaper type stuff. Basically I'm looking for something that outlines the inner workings such as frame format.

This is too basic:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps700/products_tech_note09186a008013565f.shtml

This is the detail I am looking for (although this is about trunking instead of PVLANs):

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk389/tk390/technologies_tech_note09186a0080094665.shtml

I am guessing the frames are tagged in some way like 802.1q or ISL but I would like to read about the specifics.

[milan.kulik]

Hi,

are you sure there is some special PVLAN frame format?

I always thought the frames were tagged with secondary or primary (when sent from a promiscuous port) VLAN tag while sent on trunk...

"You can extend private VLANs across multiple devices by trunking the primary, isolated, and community VLANs to other devices that support private VLANs."

See http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat6000/122sx/swcg/pvlans.htm#wp1110487

for details.

Regards,

Milan

[cstierle]

No I'm not sure about the frame format. I was just thinking that maybe internal to the switch the frame is tagged as it comes in from a PVLAN port. Basically I was thinking that maybe the backplane of the switch acts almost like a trunk in that when a frame comes in from a PVLAN port it is tagged and sent across the backplane. The switch reads the tag and forwards it out to the correct PVLAN ports.

As I said, I'm not really sure so I'm looking for some whitepapers on the underlying technology.