VLAN INHERITANCE

摘要

A method of associating a VLAN with a primary VLAN such that a large number of VLANs can be supported by a switch infrastructure without unduly affecting the resources of the switch infrastructure. The method comprises assigning at set of at least one attribute for a first VLAN comprising the steps of receiving a frame of frame-based data; processing the frame to determine a first VLAN identifier; associating said first VLAN identifier with a primary VLAN identifier; and associating the set of at least one attribute of the first VLAN with a corresponding set of at least one attribute of said primary VLAN, such that the characteristics of an attribute in the set of at least one attribute of the first VLAN is determined by the characteristics of a corresponding attribute of the primary VLAN. In this manner, up to 4094 VLANs can be supported by a switch infrastructure.