Dell PowerConnect 6248 User's Guide - Page 358

Table 7-24. MST Port Commands CLI Command spanning-tree mst 0 external-cost spanning-tree mst cost spanning-tree mst port-priority Description Sets the external cost for the common spanning tree. Configure the path cost for multiple spanning tree (MST) calculations. Configures port priority. Configuring VLANs Adding Virtual LAN (VLAN) support to a Layer 2 switch offers some of the benefits of both bridging and routing. Like a bridge, a VLAN switch forwards traffic based on the Layer 2 header, which is fast, and like a router, it partitions the network into logical segments, which provides better administration, security and management of multicast traffic. A VLAN is a set of end stations and the switch ports that connect them. You may have many reasons for the logical division, such as department or project membership. The only physical requirement is that the end station and the port to which it is connected both belong to the same VLAN. Each VLAN in a network has an associated VLAN ID, which appears in the IEEE 802.1Q tag in the Layer 2 header of packets transmitted on a VLAN. An end station may omit the tag, or the VLAN portion of the tag, in which case the first switch port to receive the packet may either reject it or insert a tag using its default VLAN ID. A given port may handle traffic for more than one VLAN, but it can only support one default VLAN ID. To display the VLAN menu page, click Switching →VLAN in the tree view. This VLAN page contains links to the following features: • VLAN Membership • Double VLAN • VLAN Port Settings • VLAN LAG Settings • Bind MAC to VLAN • Bind IP Subnet to VLAN • Protocol Group • GVRP Parameters VLAN Membership Use the VLAN Membership page to define VLAN groups stored in the VLAN membership table. Your switch supports up to 4094 VLANs. However, you can actually create only 4092 VLANs because: • VLAN 1 is the default VLAN of which all ports are members, and • VLAN 4095 is designated as the "Discard VLAN." 358 Configuring Switching Information