VLAN Tagging

ncustodio · Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2010 11:04 am Post subject: VLAN Tagging

I am currently configuring two E450gx's for failover in a Dual Network enviroment. The external interfaces of both the coyote points will plug into a switchport that will be on vlan100 the internal port will be plugged into a switchport that is on vlan32. From what I have read in the documentation the external switchport of a coyotepoint is vlan1 and internal is vlan2 out of the box and there is no way of changing this. Am I reading this wrong? How would one plug these devices in if VLAN1 or 2 can not be used? There must be something that I'm missing, is there a way to change the vlan tagging to accommodate my network topology?

tls · Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:55 am Post subject:

Help me understand whether you want the Equalizer's switch ports to run tagged or untagged. If you're running them untagged, it doesn't matter what VLAN numbers Equalizer uses to refer to the port groups -- traffic will still flow how you want.

If, however, you want to run the ports tagged, you can simply use the Equalizer GUI to assign ports (whether the ones labelled "external" on the outside of the box or not) to vlans 32 and 100, whichever ports you like. If you need help manipulating the GUI to do this, I suggest opening a support case -- our support team walk you though this on the phone.

This all applies to version 8.6. There is no support for tagged vlans in 8.5, only port-based untagged vlans.

Thor Simon
Coyote Point Engineering

ncustodio · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 9:13 am Post subject:

I dont want to tag. I just want to add the external interface of the load balancers to a switchport on my switch assigned to vlan100. When I do that I am able to get to the GUI and point the LB however I get vlan mismatch errors on my switch for the port the LB is plugged into.

tls · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:14 am Post subject:

Are you running 8.5 or 8.6 software?

Equalizer will not emit any tagged frames unless either:

1) You're running 8.6 and explicitly set the port to tagged for some vlan. It sounds like you aren't running 8.6, or didn't do this. But you should check.

2) You are using port-based vlans (including the default internal/external vlans) and actually feed tagged frames to the load balancer -- it will happily forward them to any other ports in the same port-based vlan, leaving whatever tags were originally on them alone.

I would guess you've probably got situation #2 going on -- you may be feeding Equalizer tagged frames on a port-based VLAN (this would be a misconfiguration of the external switch you have that port on the load balancer plugged into) and it is returning them to that external switch via another port in the same port-based Equalizer VLAN. The external switch is then complaining that it's seeing tagged frames tagged with a VLAN number it doesn't expect to see on that port (of the external switch) -- the one *it* stamped on them on the way outbound towards the first Equalizer port involved.

If that's what's going on, the fix is to be *sure* you aren't emitting or expecting tagged frames on any ports on any other device which is plugged into a port on the load balancer which is not set to tagged mode.

I suggest opening a support case and letting us help you with this by phone -- it will probably be much quicker. Do please refer the support representative to this forum thread.

Hope this helps!

Thor Simon
Coyote Point Engineering