Basic clarification on IP address on VLAN interfaces

[news2010a]

Folks, can you clarify the following to help me understand whether I should assign an IP to identify SWITCH2 as shown below:

[SWITCH1 f0/1-f0/23 vlan3

f0/24 trunk allow vlan 3 connected to SWITCH2]

[SWITCH2 f0/1-f0/22 Vlan 1]

F0/24 trunk allow vlan 3 connected to SWITCH1. F0/23 is trunk Vlan3 uplink to a Layer 3 switch]

On SWITCH2, I will do:

int vlan 3

ip add 10.3.33.1 255.255.255.0

Question:

Do I have any technical reason to also assign an IP address

to the vlan 3 on SWITCH1? The benefit of assign an IP to the VLAN 3 in this case is just to identify the switch with an IP address, correct?

[jpoplawski · Accepted solution]

Technical reason, no you don't need an IP on the switch. It would be nice and/or recommended to remote support it, wouldn't it? For example you want to check port states, speeds, etc. A lot more convenient to access the CLI remotely.

Benefit would be remote support, monitoring, SNMP, etc.

Hope this helps, rate if it does!

JB

[Jon Marshall]

Marlon

"Do I have any technical reason to also assign an IP address to the vlan 3 on SWITCH1?"

Yes, for management purposes. Assigning an IP address to the vlan 3 interface will allow you to connect to that switch remotely if you need to modify the configuration.

Jon