Static And Dynamic Vlan

• What is static VLAN ?
•  What is dynamic VLAN ?
• What is vmps ?
• How vmps works ?

Static VLANs: 

Static VLANs are also called port-based VLANs, a network administrator creates a VLAN and then assigns switch ports to a particular VLAN. The association with the VLAN does not change until the administrator changes the port assignment. and so the End-user devices become the members of VLAN based on the physical switch port to which they are connected. 

A single switch can create multiple VLANs. and if two devices are connected to different ports on a same switch and if the connected ports are on different VLANs, traffic will not pass between them to enable communication between two VLANs We need a layer 3 device (typically a Router or L3 switch).

Dynamic Vlan:-

• Dynamic Vlan's are based on MAC address of a pc,
• a switch automatically assign a port to a vlan
• each port can be a member of multiple vlan's
• for dynamic vlan configuration a software called vmps (vlan membership policy server) is needed

A VLAN Management Policy Server (VMPS) is a network switch that contains a database of mac address to be mapped with device to VLAN,

which means a user is free to connect its device with any of the port of switch. and vmps server will check in its database, match the mac address of connected device and assign the port automatically to concern vlan.

The primary goal of VMPS is VLAN assignment for network management, but can also be used for filtering the user / clients with an unknown MAC address, the VMPS technology is Cisco proprietary and VLAN assignment can be carried out in the 802.1X framework.

How it works :-

• vmps helps with the dynamic allocation of vlan across the network.
• Client switches query the VMPS server using the VLAN Query Protocol, or VQP.
• vmps server check within it's database that the device with connected mac-address belongs to which vlan
• Finally assign the concern port to that vlan in which device has to be,

Only Cisco produces hardware with VMPS client functionality, and is currently fully supported across their IOS switching lines. Cisco officially only supports the use of Catalyst 4000, 5000 and 6500 switch platforms (with appropriate firmware) as VMPS servers, but these have limited functionality, and only support a static text file transferred into them using tftp.