VTP

VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) Overview – Series 5

These days I am in Bangalore with my parents just enjoying my holidays. Guess what today night I am travelling to Singapore and Malaysia with my wife. May be I  will not be in a position post more posts this month as I am relaxing and enjoying the beauty of Nature. For sure I am going to share the natural beauty with all you guys.

Mean while before departing to Singapore I thought let me continue my series on VTP , in this series let s focus on VTP modes. There three type of VTP modes

a)      VTP Server

b)      VTP Client

c)      VTP Transparent

VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) Overview – Series 4

What do you think what happens? If a new Cisco Catalyst® switch is placed between any two VTP domains, the Cisco Catalyst® switch will join the VTP domain identified by the first VTP update it receives. Just check the below example.

The VTP domain can be changed to another in a Cisco Catalyst® switch by using the CLI prompt, this is the only way you can change.

VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) Overview – Series 3

In Cisco Catalyst® switches the VTP domain can be added through CLI configuration or else it can be learnt from an adjacent VTP Cisco Catalyst® switch. Let’s see this from the below example

Switch C is added to the network connecting via a trunk port to Switch B with no VTP domain configured, in this mode when the Switch C receives the first VTP update from the adjacent Switch B , it will become the part of the VTP domain ITKE as identified in the VTP update.

VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) Overview – Series 2

In my previous post I just introduced the VLAN trunking protocol; let’s talk about the VTP domain.

The VTP domain consists of a group of logical group of Cisco Catalyst Switches that are part of the same VTP management domain. A  Cisco Catalyst Switch can belong only to one VTP domain at any time,

The VTP domain is a logical group of switches that will share VLAN information. Each switch can belong only to one VTP domain in addition to sharing the VLAN information with all other Cisco Catalyst Switches in the same VTP domain. Cisco Catalyst Switches in different VTP domains drops any VTP updates received from Cisco Catalyst Switches.

VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) Overview – Series 1

What is a VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP)?

VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) is a Cisco proprietary Layer 2 messaging protocol that manages the addition, deletion, and renaming of VLANs for the Cisco Catalyst Switches in the same VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) domain.  VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) enables Cisco Catalyst Switches to exchange and maintain consistent VLAN information amongst a group of Cisco Catalyst Switches.

For example, information for the VLAN 50 defined in Cisco Catalyst Switch A is propagated via VTP updates to all other Cisco Catalyst Switches (Switches B, C and D) in the same VTP domain, the other Cisco Catalyst Switches B, C and D will all end up adding VLAN 50 in their local VLAN data base. VTP is available on most of the Cisco Catalyst Family products.

The comparable IEEE standard in use by other manufacturers is GVRP.