Cascading Multiple Procurve's ?

[Joel Belizario]

Hi Karl,

Yes I'm using the term "uplink" generically - you could call it an inter-switch link too I guess. There is no dedicated function for this.

When you assign an IP address to a VLAN you are creating a virtual router. For management purposes (over network) each switch requires an IP address (in your management VLAN, which you may or may not have explicitly defined).

Think of the IP addresses on your mothership switch as routers downstream from your "real" router. A VLAN is a totally isolated network until you connect it to another network with a router (just like a real LAN).

The concept of tagging and untagging ports is to extend the logical boundary of the VLANs across switches (and other devices that understand 802.1Q tagging).

When you untag a port, that port is "physically" in the assigned VLAN. When you tag a port with a particular VLAN, you are encapsulating that traffic on top of the untagged traffic that is being carried by that port.

I've found it's helped me to wrap my head around the concept by understanding what how the tagging process works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.1Q

Hope this clears any confusion.

Cheers,
Joel