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712
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Simple VLAN question

bprinski
Level 1
Level 1

All,

What is the maximum number of user in a single vlan. What does Cisco recommend?

Thanks

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

Tarun Lohumi
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Number of VLANs and Users

The maximum number of users that you can define per known network is 1000.

Cisco recommends that a VLAN contain no more than 150 to 200 users.

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/rtrmgmt/sw_ntman/cwsimain/cwsi_1/cwsi1_ug/vldug/design.htm

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7 Replies 7

bmbreer
Level 1
Level 1

That really depends on a number fo things, for instance, what type of application traffic is there in the vlan, etc. There's no one single answer that will fit all situations.

So not even an average, that you can go by?

Jon Marshall
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

There is no strict limit as such but the general recommendation is to use a Class C per vlan. However this is very generic and you need to take into account

1) Broadcast traffic on the vlan

2) Security issues - ie. does it make more sense to have smaller vlans that you can control the traffic between

3) Does your user base fit into a vlan design as such ie. marketing dept gets one vlan, sales another vlan etc.

Where i used to work we used /25's per vlan ie. half a class C. These worked well.

Jon

Tarun Lohumi
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Number of VLANs and Users

The maximum number of users that you can define per known network is 1000.

Cisco recommends that a VLAN contain no more than 150 to 200 users.

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/rtrmgmt/sw_ntman/cwsimain/cwsi_1/cwsi1_ug/vldug/design.htm

Tarun,

I'm curious what this 1,000 user limit per vlan is based on. I read the webpage you referenced but it doesn't explain why. What would keep me from having 1,200 users per vlan.

Tarun

I, like Brad, am also curious about that statement. Vlans have no concept of users as such so i'm really curious to know why the limit is 1000. Surely i could use a class B address range and have everybody in vlan 1 ? - admittedly not something i would do and it wouldn't work very well :) but i'm not aware of any limitation that would stop me doing that.

Thanks

Jon

It's an old doc, original copyright '89. Notice it's using the 3000 and 5000 in its example. Perhaps 1,000 users was some limitation of one or both platforms at the time.

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