DGS-3224TGR Gigabit Ethernet Switch User’s Guide
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802.1Q VLAN Tags
The figure below shows the 802.1Q VLAN tag. There are four additional octets inserted after the source MAC address.
Their presence is indicated by a value of 0x8100 in the EtherType field. When a packet’s EtherType field is equal to
0x8100, the packet carries the IEEE 802.1Q/802.1p tag. The tag is contained in the following two octets and consists of
three bits of user priority, one bit of Canonical Format Identifier (CFI – used for encapsulating Token Ring packets so they
can be carried across Ethernet backbones) and twelve bits of VLAN ID (VID). The three bits of user priority are used by
802.1p. The VID is the VLAN identifier and is used by the 802.1Q standard. Because the VID is twelve bits long, 4094
unique VLANs can be identified.
The tag is inserted into the packet header making the entire packet longer by four octets. All of the information contained in
the packet originally is retained.
Figure 5- 2. IEEE 802.1Q Tag
The EtherType and VLAN ID are inserted after the MAC source address, but before the original EtherType/Length or
Logical Link Control. Because the packet is now a bit longer than it was originally, the Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)
must be recalculated.
Figure 5- 3. Adding an IEEE 802.1Q Tag
