vlans, ip address

[carl_townshend]

why do we sometimes need to apply an ip address to a vlan, is it for management or incase your doing intervlan routing ?

[amit-singh]

Carl,

On Layer 2 switches, we give IP to vlans only to manage the switch. Although a switch is a layer 2 desvice but it mainls an IP protocol stack to manage it remotely.

On a layer 3 switch where we have routing enabled on it,the Vlan IP's are the gateway for the hosts. So on layer 3 switches we define ip on Vlans to manage it and also for the gateway.

HTH,

-amit singh

[chugh.sandeep]

Generally layer2 switch is assigned with vlan 1 ip address apart from this no vlan in Layer 2 switch is assigned ip address where as in case of Layer 3 switch we need to give ip address to each vlan if we to make any intervlan routing.

Rgds

Sandeep Chugh