A technology for creating a virtual local network as part of a physical local network connected to one or more broadcast domains. A VLAN reduces the load on the network infrastructure, since information transfer requests within the virtual segment do not go to a central switch. In addition, a VLAN increases security by reducing the number of packets that are transmitted to physical network devices and prone to interception by intruders.
For external traffic switching and VLAN affiliation, packets generated by the virtual network are tagged with a 12-bit ID in the range from 0 to 4095. VLAN operation is defined by the 802.1Q standard.