You are more than welcome.   M

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-----Original message-----
From: Jason Grubbs <[email protected]>
To: Enterasys Customer Mailing List <[email protected]>
Sent: Fri, May 25, 2012 15:05:08 GMT+00:00
Subject: Re: [enterasys] Configure a port to use two VLANs

Thank you for the wealth of information Mike!  Whenever we talk to Enterasys, 
they always mention UNC!

Jason Grubbs
Network Engineer
Pottsgrove School District

From: <Hawkins>, The Original Mike Stephen 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
To: Enterasys Customer Mailing List 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: RE:[enterasys] Configure a port to use two VLANs

Jason:

I have one comment on your question and several comments on the related topic 
of managing vlans on Enterasys switches.

The IEEE 801.1 vlan standard will not let you assign more than one vlan per 
port where both are untagged.  The only way to have two or more vlans on a port 
is to have them tagged.  However, this means that the device(s) on that port 
must be setup to recognize that traffic for each vlan that it needs.  Each OS 
does this by various commands to setup 801.1Q trunking.  While I am no expert 
on this (setting up servers, etc), see http://www.arrfab.net/blog/?p=40 for 
more information.  It may also vary according to the nic driver for your nic.  
Thus when packets come in for vlan 200, your system/nic knows that things 
tagged with vlan 200 are what it is interested in to send to the vlan 200 
portion (if you will) of the nic/system.

At UNC we do lots of interesting things with vlans that I see very few other 
sites doing.  These things save time and prevent errors.

One of the things we do is set a PVID on each vlan that is tagged. Here are the 
mibs in question:

dot1qPvid OBJECT-TYPE
    SYNTAX      VlanIndex
    MAX-ACCESS  read-write
    STATUS      current
    DESCRIPTION
        "The PVID, the VLAN ID assigned to untagged frames or
        Priority-Tagged frames received on this port."
    REFERENCE
        "IEEE 802.1Q/D11 Section 12.10.1.1"
    DEFVAL      { 1 }
    ::= { dot1qPortVlanEntry 1 }

dot1qPortAcceptableFrameTypes OBJECT-TYPE
    SYNTAX      INTEGER {
                    admitAll(1),
                    admitOnlyVlanTagged(2)
                }
    MAX-ACCESS  read-write
    STATUS      current
    DESCRIPTION
        "When this is admitOnlyVlanTagged(2) the device will
        discard untagged frames or Priority-Tagged frames
        received on this port.  When admitAll(1), untagged
        frames or Priority-Tagged frames received on this port
        will be accepted and assigned to the PVID for this port.

        This control does not affect VLAN independent BPDU
        frames, such as GVRP and STP.  It does affect VLAN
        dependent BPDU frames, such as GMRP."
    REFERENCE
        "IEEE 802.1Q/D11 Section 12.10.1.3"
    DEFVAL      { admitAll }
    ::= { dot1qPortVlanEntry 2 }


As I said, setting a PVID buys you much.  We setup all tagged vlans on a port 
with a PVID of a value 999.  This is what we consider to be a junk vlan.  Thus 
if for some reason on a tagged port there are packets that are tagged with a 
vlan you do not want to see on that port or then those packets get dropped into 
the 999 vlan which is in effect a black hole that does not get off the switch 
port.  We do not want end system setting vlan tagging on packets, we believe 
that to be the function of the network.  Thus we can keep unwanted traffic off 
the network if there is something not configured correctly on a system or if 
there is a bug with an application.  This one little feature has saved our 
bacon more than a time or two.

GVRP
Another big time saver for us at UNC when it comes to vlan is the protocol 
GVRP.  We are big users of GVRP on our network.  Enterasys switch have an 
excellent implementation of GVRP.  This allows for dynamic trunks to be setup 
between ports such that you can always be assured that the vlan(s) you want are 
going down a trunk.  It saves tremendous amounts of network manager time over 
having to tag many links to get a vlan where you need it to go.

ATGTools - vlanConfig
One final big time saver for us at UNC is a command called "vlanConfig" which 
is part of the ATGTools set that Enterasys gives away on their web site.  This 
"vlanConfig" command is an executable command (Windows and various Linux, unix 
versions available) is a program that sends commands to a switch or list of 
switches to make vlan changes on a switch.  It is much faster especially when 
you want to make changes on a number of switches at one time.  The deal with 
this is kind of odd in that many of the field engineers in Enterasys do not 
know about this/these tools much less use them.  There is the belief in much of 
Enterasys is that the average network manager will shoot themselves in the foot 
too often.  Officially Enterasys does not want to support this however at UNC 
we find it invaluable at time savings.  We use it one command at a time we use 
it extensively in scripts to setup switches and to make massive vlan changes on 
groups of switches.  The vlanConfig command is the main way we set tagged vlans 
on ports with the 999 Pvid.  See below the output of help for this c

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