VLAN Lab - Help Required

[ElijahBaley]

Hi Guy's

Please note that this post rambles a bit, and if you have a better use for your time you might be better off carrying on with what you were doing.

I had a bit of trouble getting my head around a Lab that I have just started working on, I was going to ask about the routing logic going on here but I think I am okay with that now, I then noticed something about VLAN,s

Anyway if you do want to take a look, here is the network topology in my Lab:

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You can visualise the following layout as two V shape 'islands' of Routers, side by side with a switch below each and a fast ethernet connection between the switches.

Router2501A S0 172.16.20.2/24
Router2501B S0 172.16.30.2/24

Are Connected to:

Router2501C S0 172.16.20.1/24
S1 172.16.30.1/24

And

Router2501C S0 172.16.40.2/24
Router2501D S0 172.16.50.2/24

Are Connected to:

Router2600A S0/0 172.16.40.1/24
S0/1 172.16.50.1/24


Router2501C Ethernet

e0 172.16.10.1

Is Connected to:

Switch 1900A 172.16.10.3/24

And

Router 2600A Ethernet

F0/0 172.16.10.2

Is Connected to:

Switch 1900B 172.16.10.4/24


There is a 100MB 100BaseT Trunk between the two switches 1900A & 1900B
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As you can see the Ethernet interfaces of 2501C & 2600A are on subnet 172.16.10.0 and are bridged via the two switches connecting the two 'islands' of routers and allowing RIP routing updates to propagate throughout.

Later in this lab I will be creating VLAN's, but for now I assume that network 172.16.10.0 is in the default VLAN1

I think that after working through this I understand the answer to the question that I was going to pose, but hey Im going to pose it anyway!

Does the above topology mean that other VLANs will have to be created to allow hosts to use the switches, I mean if you were to plug servers and workstations directly into either switch, they would all be in default VLAN1 and have 2 routers on the same ethernet segment, hmmn I suppose one could be configured as the default gateway and the other ignored - don't really know where im going with this but if you have any comments please go ahead.


Cheers


EB