:Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but since switches forward  packets
:selectively per port, I would think it would be hard to sniff packets on
:any port, w/o administrative access to the switch to tell it to mirror
:data to a different port.
:
:ie, if I'm plugged into port 1, I can't see traffic on a switch on port 2
:except for broadcast traffic...

    The switch routes traffic based on its ARP cache.  While you cannot 
    easily monitor another port's traffic, you can take over its MAC address
    and steal its traffic.

    Cisco VLANs perform a different function.  Remember that a logical ethernet
    segment is typically routed by a single network route.  For example,
    a class C or a subnetted class C.  The catalyst allows you to throw
    machines into different VLAN buckets which, in addition to the better
    security, allows you to assign separate subnets to each bucket.  The
    switch itself doesn't care, but this can reduce global ARP traffic
    significantly.   Catalysts can have hundreds of ports stuffed into them.

                                        -Matt


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