What Is Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN)?

As a digital substitute for your physical location, a Virtual Local Area Network, or #VLAN for short, can be your virtual office. Think of it like the rooms in your office building, except instead of physical walls separating them, and there are just figurative ones. Large organizations typically utilize VLANs to divide their networks into smaller, more manageable chunks. Keeping different departments or user groups apart from one another boosts network security and efficiency. Depending on the size of your business, you should set up multiple VLANs, each serving a different department. In this way, even if an employee in accounts payable accidentally clicks on a phishing email, the attack won't spread throughout the network and compromise the company's data. Virtual LANs (VLANs) are made through VLAN tagging and switching procedures. Packets are assigned to the correct VLAN using VLAN tagging, and packets are routed using VLAN switching. These methods work hand in hand with one another. This process occurs at the OSI model's data link layer. VLANs allow you to better use your network's resources, which is one of their main advantages. Giving particular VLANs, such as your voice VLAN, the ability to have priority over the traffic of other VLANs is one approach to guarantee that your most critical voice traffic is always prioritized over less urgent data traffic. Another perk of using VLANs is how easy it is to add or remove users and devices from a network. For instance, if an employee leaves the company, rather than redesigning the entire network, it is sufficient to remove them from their VLAN. A Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) is a valuable tool for breaking up and administering large networks. It's like having a digital office building with separate cubicles for each division, improving network efficiency and safety. Using virtual local area networks can help your network run more efficiently and securely (VLANs). The three pillars of network governance are network segmentation, management, and security.