Blog VLAN lab notes from a small campus-style network
VLAN lab notes from a small campus-style network
Lessons from mapping access ports, trunks, and firewall boundaries in a lab network.
Contents
Context
A university networking lab is useful because it forces the design to be visible. Hosts, switches, trunks, and firewall interfaces all need names that match the diagram.
What helped
- Keep one table for VLAN ID, subnet, gateway, and purpose.
- Label access ports before testing trunks.
- Check native VLAN assumptions explicitly.
- Treat the firewall boundary as part of the design, not a later patch.
Commands
ip addr
ip route
ping -c 3 192.0.2.1
traceroute 198.51.100.10Takeaway
Most VLAN mistakes are documentation mistakes first. The packet path gets easier to debug when the expected path is written down.