What do VLANs provide?

Yes, that's the eternal question isn't it

What do vlans provide?

a) Easier routing
b) Easier management
c) A method to segment LANs at layer 2
d) A method of logically grouping resources without concern as to geographic location

I picked (c), but both (b) and (d) seem like reasonable answers as well. I think (d) was supposed to be the correct answer, but I forgot to make a note of what was actually correct, LOL.

Maybe (c) refers to further segmenting a layer 2 domain and the English as a second language tripped me, but suerely both b and d should be good answers?

Any thoughts?

/creamy

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Comments

GT-Rob

If I had to pick one of those, I would pick d.

But the wording is vague and one could argue pretty much all of them.

Highspade

I don't like the "without concern as to geographic location" portion of question D; however, the wording on C is even worse.

I would have to say D

mikej412

I'd go with C.

I remember the old Cisco CCNA Network Academy courseware pointing out the problems with trying to put similar resources in different geographic areas in the same VLAN -- and advising against it. I remember that because we hit those same problems when we were building some of our first global internet server farms -- and the people who thought it was a good idea learned the lesson the hard way.

Highspade

mikej412 wrote:

I'd go with C.

I remember the old Cisco CCNA Network Academy courseware pointing out the problems with trying to put similar resources in different geographic areas in the same VLAN -- and advising against it. I remember that because we hit those same problems when we were building some of our first global internet server farms -- and the people who thought it was a good idea learned the lesson the hard way.

Sigh! This just goes to show how much I hated the provided selection of answers. I responded to your post trying to argue that D was the correct answer, and in the process sold myself into response C *but I still don't like it...

lol

gorebrush

Answer would be (c)

Say you have a single broadcast domain on a single site and you grow to over 500 users - Do you want to be running two seperate networks just so you can accomdate the growth?

Of course not - seperating logically using VLAN's (By Dept, or by Level number (Say you have 10 stories) eases the burden on the L2 network.

nel

i would go for C but the others seem like close possibilities too.

Crap wording all round i say.

What material is that question from btw?

bighornsheep

I would go with d), routers segment LANs, remember at the CCNA level, the explanation of VLANs usually involves the typical example of "engineering" "accounting" "marketing" departments, VLANs group those resources together.

Also, the keyword is the "geographic location", at the CCNA level without reading SONA and Campus Network architecture, VLANs are useful for logical purposes without much regard for physical location.

Paul Boz

It's D. VLANs allow you to logically segment resources with no concern for geographic location.

Scenario:

You have a vlan for each department in the company. a new employee is hired into the marketing department, but until some restructuring occurs, he has to work in the finance department because there isn't room in the marketing department for him yet. The new employee does not need access to the finance department's data, so the IT staff places him in the marketing vlan. In this scenario the new hire is physically separated from his department, but logically connected to their LAN via vlans.

Another scenario:

Management vlans. A system administrator can not afford out of band management. As a result, he creates a management VLAN to carry all management traffic from devices around the network. While the various managed devices are spread throughout the network, the system admin has partitioned the management traffic from the rest of the network traffic by imposing a vlan. This creates an in-band management LAN without the cost of a stand alone network for management purposes.

hope that helps.

creamy_stew

nel wrote:

i would go for C but the others seem like close possibilities too.

Crap wording all round i say.

What material is that question from btw?

Yeah, especially the wording of (c)

The question is from the supplementary cd on Lammle's FastPass book. Maybe they're not that good?

I just don't feel like splurging for the Odom book when I feel I've covered the actual material with nuggets and the Lammle book.

EdTheLad

The answer is clearly C.
D is not network specific, a resource could be anything,i'm a resource.Webex provides answer D as far as my project manager is concerned.

AlexMR

I think that is question is harder than any of the 50 I got in both my ICNDs exams. I would go with D but I understand everybody who has said C. It IS also C but D covers more precisely the actual definition.

creamy_stew

EdTheLad wrote:

The answer is clearly C.
D is not network specific, a resource could be anything,i'm a resource.Webex provides answer D as far as my project manager is concerned.

I don't understand. Webex like in Video Conference?

BTW, I just looked up the question again and the answer according to Lammle is D. This is his explanation:

"VLANs provide network administrators with the ability to logically group network resources and users together regardless of their geographic locations. This is done by assigning a user’s switch port to a specific VLAN."

creamy_stew

AlexMR wrote:

I think that is question is harder than any of the 50 I got in both my ICNDs exams. I would go with D but I understand everybody who has said C. It IS also C but D covers more precisely the actual definition.

That's good to hear AlexMR!

Discussions like this help reinforce the learning though, so it's all good I guess

/creamy

kryolla

the purpose of vlan is to break up broadcast domains by default the switch only has 1 broadcast domain so in order to segment it at layer 2 (C) you need vlans.

networker050184

Another vote for C.

cisco_trooper

mikej412 wrote:

I'd go with C.

I remember the old Cisco CCNA Network Academy courseware pointing out the problems with trying to put similar resources in different geographic areas in the same VLAN -- and advising against it. I remember that because we hit those same problems when we were building some of our first global internet server farms -- and the people who thought it was a good idea learned the lesson the hard way.

Agreed. End to End VLANs are not a good design. I have to go with C.

Netwurk

Cisco's definition of a VLAN: "Group of devices on one or more LANs that are configured (using management software) so that they can communicate as if they were attached to the same wire, when in fact they are located on a number of different LAN segments. Because VLANs are based on logical instead of physical connections, they are extremely flexible."

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/internetworking/terms_acronyms/ita.html

Just thought I'd throw that in there, since it might explain why C isn't the greatest answer.

D is kind of OK, but using the word "geographic" is really a stretch.

Are you sure there is not an answer E that you forgot to post?

cisco_trooper

Check out BCMSN page 118.

dynamik

When ambiguous questions like this come up in the MS forums, we usually say something like, "It's a bad question, don't worry about it. Multiple answers seem to be correct, but they seem to be looking for the 'most correct'. As long as you understand the underlying concepts, you'll be fine."

You Cisco guys are hardcore!

skrpune

This would be one of those circumstances where you have to select the best answer, and my vote would be for D. The "geographic" part of that selection is being focused on way too much, and I think that "geographic" is probably being used in the sense of physical location.

If you look at the simple definition of a VLAN, it's mostly about logically connecting resources (printers, PCs, whatever) that aren't physically directly connected or part of the same physical LAN. VLANs do work at layer 2, but the main purpose isn't to segment LAN's - it's to join up together different resources into a grouping without having to change their physical location. That's my two cents...