ZyXEL Communications P-870HW-51a v2 User Manual page 65

In Multi-Tenant Unit (MTU) applications, VLAN is vital in providing isolation and security
among the subscribers. When properly configured, VLAN prevents one subscriber from
accessing the network resources of another on the same LAN, thus a user will not see the
printers and hard disks of another user in the same building.
VLAN also increases network performance by limiting broadcasts to a smaller and more
manageable logical broadcast domain. In traditional switched environments, all broadcast
packets go to each and every individual port. With VLAN, all broadcasts are confined to a
specific broadcast domain.
Introduction to IEEE 802.1Q Tagged VLAN
A tagged VLAN uses an explicit tag (VLAN ID) in the MAC header to identify the VLAN
membership of a frame across bridges - they are not confined to the switch on which they were
created. The VLANs can be created statically by hand or dynamically through GVRP. The
VLAN ID associates a frame with a specific VLAN and provides the information that switches
need to process the frame across the network. A tagged frame is four bytes longer than an
untagged frame and contains two bytes of TPID (Tag Protocol Identifier), residing within the
type/length field of the Ethernet frame) and two bytes of TCI (Tag Control Information), starts
after the source address field of the Ethernet frame).
The CFI (Canonical Format Indicator) is a single-bit flag, always set to zero for Ethernet
switches. If a frame received at an Ethernet port has a CFI set to 1, then that frame should not
be forwarded as it is to an untagged port. The remaining twelve bits define the VLAN ID,
giving a possible maximum number of 4,096 VLANs. Note that user priority and VLAN ID
are independent of each other. A frame with VID (VLAN Identifier) of null (0) is called a
priority frame, meaning that only the priority level is significant and the default VID of the
ingress port is given as the VID of the frame. Of the 4096 possible VIDs, a VID of 0 is used to
identify priority frames and value 4095 (FFF) is reserved, so the maximum possible VLAN
configurations are 4,094.
TPID User Priority
2 Bytes 3 Bits
Multicast
IP packets are transmitted in either one of two ways - Unicast (1 sender - 1 recipient) or
Broadcast (1 sender - everybody on the network). Multicast delivers IP packets to a group of
hosts on the network - not everybody and not just 1.
Internet Group Multicast Protocol (IGMP) is a network-layer protocol used to establish
membership in a Multicast group - it is not used to carry user data. IGMP version 2 (RFC
2236) is an improvement over version 1 (RFC 1112) but IGMP version 1 is still in wide use. If
you would like to read more detailed information about interoperability between IGMP
version 2 and version 1, please see sections 4 and 5 of RFC 2236. The class D IP address is
used to identify host groups and can be in the range 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255. The address
224.0.0.0 is not assigned to any group and is used by IP multicast computers. The address
224.0.0.1 is used for query messages and is assigned to the permanent group of all IP hosts
(including gateways). All hosts must join the 224.0.0.1 group in order to participate in IGMP.
The address 224.0.0.2 is assigned to the multicast routers group.
At start up, the ZyXEL Device queries all directly connected networks to gather group
membership. After that, the ZyXEL Device periodically updates this information.
P-870HW-51a v2 User's Guide
CFI VLAN ID
1 Bit 12 Bits
Chapter 5 WAN Setup
65