Are VLANs necessary for my environment?

Posted by kleefaj on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by kleefaj
Published on 2010-09-08T10:21:47Z Indexed on 2010/12/28 8:55 UTC
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Filed under:

cisco

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switch

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vlan

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network-design

Greetings.

I'm the new network manager for a school. I've inherited an environment made up of several Windows servers, about 100 Windows clients, ten printers, one Cisco router, six Cisco switches, and 1 HP switch. Also, we're using VoIP.

There are four floors in our building. The hosts on each floor are assigned to a separate VLAN. An office on the first floor has its own VLAN. All the switches are on their own VLAN. The IP phones are on their own VLAN. And the servers are on their own VLAN.

For the number of hosts on the network, are all these VLANs really buying me anything? I'm new to the VLAN concept but it seems overly complicated for this environment. Or it's genius and I just don't get it.

Any thoughts?

Thanks, Jeff

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