How to route VLAN 1 on a PowerConnect 62xx switch

Introduction The purpose of this How-to will be to show the behavior of VLAN routing on a PowerConnect 6200 switch; including how to r...

Introduction

The purpose of this How-to will be to show the behavior of VLAN routing on a PowerConnect 6200 switch; including how to route VLAN 1. We will be using a direct console connection to access the switch CLI. The setup being used is a PC6224P and 2 workstations. The PC6224P has a default config.

Steps (11 total)

1

We first assign an IP address to the switch. This IP address is assigned to the management VLAN, which by default is VLAN 1.

2

We now want to create some new VLANs to place our workstations in.

3

In order for routing to work between the VLANS, the VLANs must have an IP address assigned to them.

4

Our first test will be placing both workstations in the same VLAN and ensuring they can ping each other. We place static IP addresses on each workstation in the 192.168.2.0/24 subnet. Then place both ports in access mode for VLAN 2.

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5

Each workstation then attempts to ping each other. As we can see, the pings are successful.

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6

If we change one of the ports to a different VLAN, the workstations will no longer be able to ping each other.

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7

Once we enable VLAN routing, and place the the VLAN 3 workstation into the 192.168.3.0/24 subnet, the clients can now ping each other. VLAN routing is now working.

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8

With VLAN routing working, if we now change one of the workstations to be in VLAN 1, the workstations are not able to ping each other. The reason this occurs is because the 6200 switch cannot route its own management VLAN, which by default is VLAN 1.

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9

To allow VLAN 1 to be routed by the switch we need to remove the IP address globally, and set the management VLAN to be a different VLAN.

10

We now assign VLAN 1 the IP address that was previously assigned globally. Now ping from workstations in VLAN 1 can reach workstations in other VLANs.

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11

the following diagram shows the simple topology we used.

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Conclusion

By simply moving the Management VLAN to a different VLAN, VLAN 1 is then treated as any other VLAN and can be routed. The alternative to this would be to not use VLAN 1, and instead create a new VLAN for the desired subnet.

References

• Dell KB article.