Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) are a mechanism to segment network traffic without using a separate physical port or network connection. VMware VLANs conform to IEEE standards of specific tagging that allows routing of packets only to ports on a given VLAN.

VLANs are frequently used to segment physical networks to reduce broadcast traffic and limit traffic to a certain number of endpoints. As an example, the finance or HR department might employ a VLAN to segment their network traffic from the rest of the network. VLANs can also improve security by virtual segmentation; however, there are methods to jump from one VLAN to another, which means VLANs provide pretty good security but not complete segregation. If complete segmentation is required, then physical network isolation should be implemented.

VLANs use 802.1q tags to tag the traffic for a specific VLAN. VLAN IDs can be assigned between 1 and 4094. A VLAN of tag 0 indicates that no VLAN tagging is being used. VLAN...