CHAPTER 2 | Network Planning
Application Examples
USING LAYER 3
R
OUTING
VLANs can significantly enhance network performance and security. However, if
you use conventional routers to interconnect VLANs, you can lose most of your
performance advantage. These Gigabit Ethernet Switches are routing switches
that provide wire-speed routing, which allows you to eliminate your conventional
IP routers, except for a router to handle non-IP protocols and a gateway router
linked to the WAN. Just assign an IP address to any VLANs that need to
communicate. The switches will continue to segregate Layer 2 traffic based on
VLANs, but will now provide inter-VLAN connections for IP applications. The
switches will perform IP routing for specified VLAN groups, a directly connected
subnetwork, a remote IP subnetwork or host address, a subnetwork broadcast
address, or an IP multicast address.
Figure 11: IP Routing for Unicast Traffi
R&D
Te s t i n g
IP Network 1
IP Network 2
VLAN 1
VLAN
2
– 38 –
