VTP Mode Best Practices

Some environments still deploy VTP server/client mode, while others stick with transparent mode. It is recommended that you configure VTP for transparent mode for a number of reasons, aside from the revision number issue. If an engineer accidentally erases a VLAN, the switch through the VTP mechanism will propagate that information to the rest of the domain. In addition, VTP server/client mode currently only supports VLANs 1-1024. The extended VLAN range, 1024-4096, requires the switch to be configured in transparent mode. The rule of thumb is keep everything simple, because in the long run it can save time and money.

Thus far, the discussion throughout this chapter has been on theory and design considerations. The following section introduces some rudimentary examples on configuring the aforementioned topics. Cisco provides quite a bit of information on its site about how to configure various protocols, features, and so forth. Chapter 5, "Using Catalyst Software," is exclusively dedicated to providing configuration examples that will familiarize the reader on the more common configurations seen in the enterprise network.