Management VLAN

daan5000

Hello there

I'm studying for my CCNA exam using Wendell Odom's official Cisco cert guide. In chapter 8, VLANs are introduced. However, the concept of VLANs is clear to me, I do not understand what the writer of this book is trying to explain in the following paragraph:



He says a typical Layer 2 LAN switch can use only one VLAN interface at a time. What does he mean by this? I tried this using both Packet Tracer and real equipment and I'm perfectly able to configure 2 VLANs, assign them both an IP address and telnet to the switch's CLI from hosts in both subnets simultaneously. I searched on Google and I found a few forum topics that confirm what he's telling in the book, but I don't understand why it is working with my equipment.

I'm sure I'm misreading what he's trying to tell, but could someone please clarify this a bit further?

Thanks in advance!

toasterboy1

Do you mean you can telnet to both IP addresses assigned to the switch?

daan5000

toasterboy1 wrote: »

Do you mean you can telnet to both IP addresses assigned to the switch?

Yes _ _

steele84

I think what he means is you can only have use one management vlan at a time. You can change the vlan number of the management vlan, but you can't have management vlan 1 and management vlan 10.

james43026

I think you are confusing a few concepts, a VLAN is not the same thing as a management VLAN / SVI. Some layer 2 switches such as a 2960 with 12.2 can have more than one SVI up and running at the same time, and can be reachable from more than one SVI on that switch. Of course this isn't really necessary in most cases.

daan5000

I figured out, some layer 2 switches like the 2960 do support multiple active SVIs running at the same time. Other (older) layer 2 switches like the 2950 do not support it. They will show the second SVI as up/down and will not accept any telnet sessions on that interface. For exam purposes, I think the rule is: layer 2 switches do not support it but layer 3 switches do.