Traffic Management; Typical User Vlan Configurations - Avaya W310 User Manual

Chapter 12 W310 WLAN Gateway Wireless Features

Traffic Management

In addition to enhancing wireless traffic management, the VLAN-capable AP supports easy
assignment of wireless users to workgroups. In a typical scenario, each user VLAN
represents a workgroup; for example, one VLAN could be used for an EMPLOYEE
workgroup and the other, for a GUEST workgroup.
In this scenario, the AP would assign every packet it accepted to a VLAN. Each packet
would then be identified as EMPLOYEE or GUEST, depending on which wireless NIC
received it. The AP would insert VLAN headers or "tags" with identifiers into the packets
transmitted on the wired backbone to a network switch.
Finally, the W310 would be configured to route packets from the EMPLOYEE workgroup to
the appropriate corporate resources such as printers and servers. Packets from the GUEST
workgroup could be restricted to a gateway that allowed access to only the Internet. A
member of the GUEST workgroup could send and receive e-mail and access the Internet, but
would be prevented from accessing servers or hosts on the local corporate network.

Typical User VLAN Configurations

VLANs segment network traffic into workgroups, which enable you to limit broadcast and
multicast traffic. Workgroups enable clients from different VLANs to access different
resources using the same network infrastructure. Clients using the same physical network are
limited to those resources available to their workgroup.
The AP can segment users into a maximum of 16 different workgroups (32 if using two
cards in a dual-radio AP) based on an SSID/VLAN pair (also referred as a VLAN
Workgroup or a Sub-network).
The four primary scenarios for using VLAN workgroups are as follows:
1. VLAN disabled: Your network does not use VLANs, but you can configure the AP to
use multiple SSIDs.
2. VLAN enabled, all VLAN Workgroups use the same VLAN ID Tag
3. VLAN enabled, each VLAN workgroup uses a different VLAN ID Tag
4. VLAN enabled, a mixture of Tagged and Untagged workgroups
168 Avaya W310 User's Guide