Our company is looking to redo some networking infrastructure. Previous IT administrators created a daisy chain network topology and all information types, from APs to workstations aggregate on a single network. Lately we have seen some performance issues and wish to rewire much of our network into a star topology network. While doing so, we would like to separate our networks. Previous design considerations have included buying new switches and isolating the traffic on a per-type/per-switch basis. Recently however, I have been thinking about using the switches we already have, and setting up the different data types on the respective VLANS.
What do you know about VLANs?
How does their security rate?
Are they a viable solution for data segragation?
Thanks in advance for you help!
-Schmidtw
Without going into too much detail, because I dont know you topology, VLAN should be used when you want to seperate traffic. If you have two networks, for example 10.1.1.0/24 and 10.1.2.0/24, and each of these networks have at least 100 hosts both, then you are going to have 200 hosts that will be sending broadcasts (esp if using windows) all the time. By creating a VLAN for each subnet, you limit the broadcast traffic to that paticular VLAN. If a subnet needs to communicate with another subnet, then a layer3 methodolgy needs to be in place, whether a router or layer3 switch. In all, if you have a small amount of hosts, then 1 VLAN is fine. If you have hosts on different floors that communicate with servers, then you want to look at VLAN's and layer3. As far as security goes, VLAN's only block broadcasts. If you have two differnet subnets, they will only be able to communicate via a layer 3 device. On that layer 3 device you will need access-lists to control traffic or implement a firewall
Once you design/deploy, make sure you check your work....I've seen many people assume their VLANs were in place and everything was "secure" only to find out the hard way (especially with VoIP) that exploits are still possible using free tools such as Cain & Abel.
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