VLAN tagging is a network layer 2 standard designed to allow separate Ethernet broadcast domains to coexist safely on a single physical interface or network fabric. Configuring a virtual IP address or virtual network interface with a specific VLAN ID, or tag, is the way to let the network hardware know which broadcast domain to assign a packet to.

Solaris 10 supported use of VLAN tagging for interfaces; however, the administrative interface was highly ugly. It involved using ifconfig to plumb virtual interfaces with mandatory 6-digit numbers.

Solaris 11's unified network interface allows for much cleaner VLAN tagging usage. You can now create a VLAN tagged virtual interface that is a top-level network entity in its own right. Basically, it is a VNIC with a fixed extra attribute, which is the VLAN tag ID. You can give it a custom name to denote that it is not just an ordinary VNIC, but after that, you can treat it as any other VNIC level device. For example:

dladm create-vlan...