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End-to-end VLANs allow
devices to be grouped based upon resource usage. This includes such
parameters as server usage, project teams, and departments. The goal
of end-to-end VLANs is to maintain 80 percent of the traffic on the
local VLAN.
As many corporate
networks have moved to centralize their resources, end-to-end VLANs
became more difficult to maintain. Users are required to use many
different resources, many of which are no longer in their VLAN.
Because of this shift in placement and usage of resources, VLANs are
now more frequently being created around geographic boundaries
rather than commonality boundaries.
This geographic location
can be as large as an entire building or as small as a single switch
inside a wiring closet. In a geographic VLAN structure, it is
typical to find the new 20/80 rule in effect with 80 percent of the
traffic remote to the user and 20 percent of the traffic local to
the user. Although this topology means that the user must cross a
Layer 3 device in order to reach 80 percent of the resources, this
design allows the network to provide for a deterministic, consistent
method of accessing resources.
Geographic VLANs are
also considerably easier to manage and conceptualize than VLANs that
span different geographic areas.
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