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What is the difference between Vlans and subnets? I don't mean the configure or structure

Nina
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VLANs are an Ethernet concept. Subnets are an IP concept.

A VLAN splits an Ethernet network into multiple logically seperate Ethernet networks.

A subnet defines which hosts a host will try to communicate with directly verses which hosts will need to go via a router. It also defines "network" and "broadcast" addresses.

It is common practice to have a 1:1 mapping between subnets and VLANs but it is perfectly possible to have multiple subnets on the same VLAN. Equally it is possible to use proxy arp to split a subnet between multiple VLANs or even have two VLANs using the same IP subnet for different purposes.

Peter Green
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