Creating VLANs: Dell PowerConnect 5324 and DHCP Router

[Jade10145]

Howdy good people,

I am currently trying to set up a vlan that will segment traffic between data and voip. My current set up is as follows.

Dell Powerconnect 5324

ethernet g1 connected to

Verizon Acitontec which serves as the DHCP server for all the devices.

I am having a problem figuring out the lay out to isolate the data devices and voip on individual vlans, while allowing both individual vlans to connect to the dhcp router and recieve ip addresses and access the internet.

The best I can figure I would need the following set up.

Default Vlan = Verizon Acitontec 192.168.1.1
VOIP VLAN= Voip port and default vlan
Data VLAN= Data ports and default vlan

Would this be the correct vlan set up?

Next question is the port settings. Should port g1 be set as a trunk port? Would the other ports be set as access ports?

Vlans are new to me and although I understand the basic concept of segementing network traffic I am having a hard time understanding how individual vlans "talk" to each other.

[Venom51]

The answer will depend on if the router is capable of handling dhcp and routing for multiple vlans and supports vlan tagging.

[STC]

My IOS is very rusty, it's been over ten years since I did any funky stuff, but I think the best path for your circumstance would be to use QoS. Vlans are usually implemented in big networks with a lot of broadcast traffic. If this is for your home and you simply want to give your VOIP a clean bit of wire to run through, QoS would allow a controlled amount of bandwidth for any of the switched ports to be allocated to VOIP traffic during 'busy' times.

It would depend on what the VOIP equipment is you are using and what other traffic you have that may be impacting VOIP as to how you implement it.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-fo ... 84018.aspx
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/n ... 5324UG.pdf

[Venom51]

I wouldn't bother with vlans just to deal with voip traffic either. It's just not that much traffic to deal with on a gigabit network. It's more important to give it priority at the router interfaces.

[Jade10145]

Well im not sure if the actiontec supports dhcp for multiple vlans or not, will need to research.

I was under the impression that a port based vlan could be set up at the switch to segment traffic without direct involvment from the router. If I was setting up a sub net type vlan then I would see the router being involved.

I think your both probably right in that a vlan isn't absolutley needed. That being said I would still like to figure out the set up for my own sick sense of fun.

[Venom51]

Well im not sure if the actiontec supports dhcp for multiple vlans or not, will need to research.

I was under the impression that a port based vlan could be set up at the switch to segment traffic without direct involvment from the router. If I was setting up a sub net type vlan then I would see the router being involved.

I think your both probably right in that a vlan isn't absolutley needed. That being said I would still like to figure out the set up for my own sick sense of fun.

A layer 2 switch isn't capable of moving traffic between VLANs. So without a router the VLANs are isolated from each other in that switch. If you were to only plug the router into VLAN 1 than VLAN 2 would have no ability to talk to the router. If you plugged it into VLAN 2 only than VLAN 1 would be cut off from it.

That's where a trunked port and tagging come in. If your router supports VLAN tagging and trunking than you can pass traffic from boh VLANs onto the trunk port. It will tag them and the recieving router will ID the tags, strip them and pass them onto the correct route.