Configuring Dynamic VLANs for Network Login

During an authentication request, network login receives a destination VLAN (Virtual LAN) (if configured on the RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) server) to put the authenticated user in.

The VLAN must exist on the switch for network login to authenticate the client on that VLAN.

You can configure the switch to dynamically create a VLAN after receiving an authentication response from a RADIUS server. A dynamically created VLAN is only a Layer 2 bridging mechanism; this VLAN does not work with routing protocols to forward traffic. If configured for dynamic VLAN creation, the switch automatically creates a supplicant VLAN that contains both the supplicant‘s physical port and one or more uplink ports. After the switch unauthenticates all of the supplicants from the dynamically created VLAN, the switch deletes that VLAN.

Note

Dynamically created VLANs do not support the session refresh feature of web-based network login because dynamically created VLANs do not have an IP address.

By dynamically creating and deleting VLANs, you minimize the number of active VLANs configured on your edge switches. In addition, the dynamic VLAN name can be stored on the RADIUS server and supplied to the switch during authentication, simplifying switch management. A key difference between dynamically created VLANs and other VLANs is that the switch does not save dynamically created VLANs. Even if you use the save command, the switch does not save a dynamically created VLAN.

After you configure network login on the switch, the two steps to configure dynamic VLANs are:

Specifying the tagged uplink port(s) to be added to each dynamically created VLAN.
Enabling the switch to create dynamic VLANs.

Published March 2020prev | next

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