Hi guys,

Silly question, when routing between VLANs, does ALL traffic go through the router, or does it simply swap tags and let the switch do the rest?

So for example I have a bunch of VLANs on a switch, a MT on a stick routing between them. A host on vlan20 wants to establish a connection to a host on vlan30 - does all the traffic pass through the MT or does the switch pass it directly from host to host once the connection has been established?

I'm guessing everything goes through the router, but it would be nice if it didn't since the switch would be much faster/efficient.

Hi guys,

Silly question, when routing between VLANs, does ALL traffic go through the router, or does it simply swap tags and let the switch do the rest?

So for example I have a bunch of VLANs on a switch, a MT on a stick routing between them. A host on vlan20 wants to establish a connection to a host on vlan30 - does all the traffic pass through the MT or does the switch pass it directly from host to host once the connection has been established?

I'm guessing everything goes through the router, but it would be nice if it didn't since the switch would be much faster/efficient.

All traffic between VLANs have to be routed in some way. If you bridge 2 VLANs this would accomplish it also but then it would be one VLAN and not 2 seperate ones.

/Henrik

I thought as much. I guess that's the main reason for Layer 3 switches; with the router's "interface" sitting on the backplane. Thanks.