VLAN Setup help

I am going to be setting Vlans up on our network. 1 data 1 voice. I have a test bed setup and eveything is coming along good.

Current Lan Gateway Sonicwall 2040

What I want to ask is the main switch we use to connect all out closets together is a HP Procurve 4101gl. This is the switch im going to enable ip routing on to route between vlans.

Would it be better to Assign all the devices on our LAN to use the hp 4104gl as the gateway in stead of the SOnicwall? In Cisco class I was told that switches with layer 3 capibilities routed at faster speeds then normal routers. Of course I would add a 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 route to the sonicwall for internet traffic.

Also in the HP 4104gl can add Vlan Priority QoS. I can add lets say 5 priority to vlan 1 Data traffic, and priority 7 to vlan 2 voice traffic. I think by having the Switch as the gateway to all these devices will help this out.

What do you guys think?

The preferable way to setup your intervlan routing would be to assign the HP Procurve 4101gl as your gateway for all network nodes and insert a default route from it to your sonicwall router.

As you correctly noted, this will help speedup the intervlan-routing process as layer 3 switches contain special hardware to enable wire-speed routing between these networks ( Cisco equipment are surely equipped with these features, can't guarantee about the rest!).

On another note, if you wanted to have the router perform the Intervlan-routing process, then you'd have to create a trunk link between the Procurve switch and the router, to allow all vlan traffic reach the router and have it perform its job (router-on-a-stick), or have multiple interfaces on your router, bind to the amount of different networks you've created.

For more information on intervlan-routing, please check our articles.

Cheers,

Thanks for your reply. Ive done router on a stick before with cisco 2600, but the sonicwall 2040 I dont think has the fucntionality the next step up Pro 4060 does tho.

I was told in class with the 3550's what you said is that they route at wirespeed. I hope this HP does, most of the routing this switch can do is static routes.

Maybe I should give HP a call. (Wish we had cisco here)

The test bed is done now, and ive tested about everything. Even got the Cisco AP1200 going on the VLans and it works. It uses seperate SSID for each vlan...so our Avaya wireless phones are good to go also.

We install HP 2626 PWR Switches with Mitel 3300, using VLAN's. Our clients don't seem to notice any difference in speed to the Cisco switches.

One thing to be aware of is that HP does not use cdp any more on some of their switches, so you need to make sure you have a dhcp range with the phone options in the native vlan so that the phones can discover what vlan they are in, reboot, then tag their discovery packets in the Voice vlan.