Allied Telesis AT-S60 - Manual (Page 445)

AT-S60 Management Software User’s Guide
Section IV: VLANs 445
GARP VLAN Registration Protocol (GVRP) Overview
The GARP VLAN Registration Protocol (GVRP) allows network devices to
share VLAN information. The main purpose of GVRP is to allow switches
to automatically discover some of the VLAN information that would
otherwise have to be manually configured in each switch. This is helpful
in networks where VLANs span more than one switch. Without GVRP,
you must manually configure your switches to ensure that the various
parts of a VLAN can communicate across the different switches. GVRP,
which is an application of the Generic Attribute Registration Protocol
(GARP), can do this for you automatically.
The AT-S60 management software uses GVRP protocol data units (PDUs)
to share VLAN information among GVRP-active devices. The PDUs
contain the VID numbers of the VLANs on the switch. A PDU contains the
VIDs of all the VLANs on the switch, not just the VID to which the
transmitting port is a member.
When a switch receives a GVRP PDU on a port, it examines the PDU to
determine the VIDs of the VLANs on the device that sent it. It then does
the following:
❑ If the VLAN does not exist on the switch, it creates the VLAN and
adds the port as a tagged member to the VLAN. A VLAN created
by GVRP is called a dynamic GVRP VLAN.
❑ If the VLAN already exists on the switch but the port is not a
member of it, the switch adds the port as a tagged member. A
port that has been added by GVRP to a static VLAN (that is a user-
created VLAN) is called a dynamic GVRP port.
You cannot modify a dynamic GVRP VLAN. Once created, only GVRP can
modify or delete it. A dynamic GVRP VLAN exists only so long as there
are active nodes in the network that belong to the VLAN. If all nodes of a
dynamic GVRP VLAN are shutdown and there are no active links, the
VLAN is deleted from the switch. A dynamic GVRP exists only so long as
the switch deems it is needed.
A dynamic GVRP port in a static VLAN remains a member of the VLAN as
long as there are active VLAN members. If all members of the VLAN
become inactive or there are no active links, GVRP removes the dynamic
port from the VLAN, but does not delete the VLAN if the VLAN is a static
VLAN.