Case Study

Figure 12-3 illustrates an organization called ELBCo that uses three VLANS: 101, 102, and 204. ELBCo has three departments within a single building: Sales, Research and Development (R&D), and IS/IT Support. Each department is assigned a VLAN as follows:

Figure 12-3. The ELBCo VLAN

Department	VLAN
Sales	102
R&D	204
IS/IT Support	101

As shown here, resources for each of these departments are spread across three floors of a building. With the implementation of a VLAN, physical location is not an issue for the users requiring access to resources. For example, the R&D users can sit at their desks on the second floor and access their server farm on the first floor without contending with other users on the LAN for bandwidth. Likewise, the Sales and IS/IT departments do not need to be concerned about the high-bandwidth network applications the R&D department is using interfering with their network usage.

In the ELBCo VLAN implementation, the VLAN provides for both an efficient use of network resources and physical workspace.