How to implement Multiple VLAN's on a Cisco SGE2010 P

[palaniappan2]

Hi everyone

I am new to VLANs and Cisco SMB switches. I have a new SGE 2010P switch and i am trying to configure different VLANs, one for data, one for Voice and the other for server.

Is there any tutorial on how to configure VLAN, by the way i tried to used the web interface and admin guide, it totally confused my understanding of Vlans.

Thanks in advanace

Palani

[David Hornstein]

Hi Palani,

The question I need to know , before i can better answer your question;

• is your SGE2010P connecting into a VLAN-able WAN router, or do you wish the SGE2010P to route/switch at Layer 3 between your configured VLANs.

• What Call controll unit will the SGE2010P be connected to?

regards Dave

[palaniappan2]

Hi David

Thanks in advance. Please see my response

1. Yeah for Voice VLAN, we have a router that does the DHCP and routing to the VOIP provider. So i guess I will not be needing to route the traffice between VLANs

2. I am not sure what Call control unit beacus this is all totally controlled by the VOIP provider.

Further, I am trying to use the default VLAN ehich is VLAN 1 for the data. Data goes through a different provider, and I have a firewall that handles the DHCP for the machines and routing.

Hope I am clear about my design. The other most important thing is if i plug a PC to the Cisco IP phone, that traffic should be routed to the data provider.

dave, by the way I saw a couple of post where you have posted a video about VLANs, it would be great to have that. I saw very good feedback on that, as it would help me undertand VLAN better.

Thanks

Palani

[David Hornstein]

Ok you asked for it, here it comes.

Because I am using MS Paint to create my picture below, I have shortened the switch to a 8 port switch, as  I am no graphic artist.

I am taking this liberty for the sake of brevity

To differentiate the traffic,  we both know we may use VLAN technology for a number of reasons.

I like to   differentiate the Ethernet frames  and maybe apply layer 3 or layer 2 techniques prioritize the voice traffic.

PC or MACs are pretty dumb devices, or at least,   harder to setup VLAN tagging on a PC as you may have to fiddle with Ethernet drivers. So I'm going to TAG the voice Ethernet frames coming into and going out of the access devices switch port.

• Ports 1 to 6    -   I will use for connection of a  PC and a VOIP  phone, these are my access ports into the network.
• port 7    -  will have a CAT5e  cable  going  to the data router.  This switch port will still be a untagged member of the default VLAN.
• port 8    -  will go to the seperate voice router .  This port will be untagged in VLAN named voice with a VLAN ID = 2

Click on the diagram below to make the picture bigger.

So,  in my example above the numbers in the table and drawn  in my hypothetical  eight port switch, represent switch port numbers.

A configuration step in this hypothetical switch, is to  make sure that my access ports (1 to 6), will still be untagged on the Default VLAN VID=1.

This will ensure that  ethernet frames in the data VLAN will be propagated out the switch, through the phones  to the PCs.

But,  I will make one exception, port 8 going to the Hosted VOIP router, this switch port 8  will be untagged in the voice vlan,  VID=2.

I'm guessing this Host VOIP providers router is not VLAN aware and thus only understands untagged ethernet frames..

For the VOIP phones to actually work in VLAN 2,  you will have to manually set these phones VOIP phone to accept and transmit tagged VLAN 2 ethernet frames.

This shouldn't be a big deal, even on my most cost effective VOIP phones, you can be manually set a VLAN ID number.

In my topology diagram above,  the coloured lines represent  a vlan stream running over a CAT5e cable, so I have both tagged and untagged ethernet frames coming in and going out of my  switch ports.

Here is my switch port VLAN scheme  that will work with the topology setup shown in my topology diagram.

NOTE: I assumed that the two WAN  routers are not VLAN-able and therefore have to received untagged Ethernet frames from my switch.

The table tells you how I wish to setup the switch ports.

All of the PC/VOIP phone switch  ports (1-6),  will be tagged in the voice VLAN  VID=2 and untagged in the default VLAN.

A video showing how i configured this on my SGE2000P can be seen by clicking the link below;

Click here to see webex video (11 minutes)

Remember,  you can  pause the recording as you perform the configuration steps

Hope this helps and makes sense

regards Dave

[palaniappan2]

Hi Dave

Thanks, really appreciate your fast response and the work you are putting in. Couple of questions, I have implemented this architecture in Cisco Catalyst 3560 switches wherein I have never used tagging. Why we are using tagging concept  for the switch ports in case of SMB switch?

Can I configure the Cisco 7960 series IP phone with the manual tagging mentioned?

One important thing: I cannot open the above video link, I mean if I click that link, it opens up a WebEx session but after a minute it says "error" and cannot open it. Is there any specifi instruction I need to know in order to open the video.

The other intersting thing is the VOIP router is a Cisco 2600 series router, not sure if has the capbaility to see VLANs. If they can that means I do not nned to use untag for port 8.

Thank You,

Palani

[David Hornstein]

Hi Palani,

You observations are interesting on the 3560, but you didn't inform what the Catalyst 3560 switch was actually doing.

The Sx300 can trust DSCP or COS values within the VOIP stream, but in this scenario you have,  you have seperate WAN routers. The Sx300 cannot perform any policy based Layer 3 routing, so I feel we have to run with VLAN telchnology to segment or differentiate your data and VOIP traffic into seperate streams.

If you cannot see my video, try someone elses PC.  I tried to figure how to convert the WEBEX ARF video to youtube video, but had no luck.

regards Dave