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Is bandwidth management over different VLANs possible with a switch that was manufactured by Cisco? If so how can i configure my switch to do so?

In every document about VLANs say "VLAN is for better bandwidth management." Is this because something else besides bandwidth management?

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  • "VLAN is for better bandwidth management" doesn't make much sense to me: VLAN is for logically segregating traffic on the same physical switch, and is part of a good isolation/security strategy. That said you can do bandwidth management with VLANs if you really want to (@Chopper3 pointed you in the right direction below)
    – voretaq7
    Jul 25, 2011 at 18:11

2 Answers 2

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Yes, quite possible, though something of a learning-curve.

Basically you'll be using the police and/or bandwidth commands, without knowing a lot more I can't help you with the specific command but HERE's a link to Cisco's own, pretty great, command line reference for this topic.

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Only if it is a multi-layer switch (which means that it does routing), layer 2 switches cannot do bandwidth management, generally because they are used on LANs where it is not required.

I've read many documents about VLANs and cannot remember any references to them being for 'better bandwidth management', better 'broadcast management' might be a more relevant phrase.

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  • there's nothing (besides market segmentations) blocking layer 2 switches from handling bandwidth.
    – Javier
    Jul 25, 2011 at 14:39
  • Plenty of Managed Layer 2 switches can control bandwidth through flow control and QoS-- they won't do them based on IP address unless they're a Layer 3 switch-- but will certainly do it by port (it may do it by vlan, but I have not tried it yet). The most efficient method is to use flow-control to tell the node how fast it can communicate-- the node can ignore it. If you can live with it, you can force the port to only communicate at 10 or 100mbps. Otherwise, because LAN is a best-effort, the additional packets can be silently discarded by the switch... which also happens if it's overloaded.
    – Reece45
    Jul 25, 2011 at 15:21

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