S-VLAN Overview

As described in VLAN Overview, VLANs permit multiplexing multiple IP interfaces and PPPoE interfaces over a single physical Ethernet port by creating VLAN subinterfaces. As specified in IEEE Standard 802.1q, the 12-bit VLAN identifier’s tagged frames enables the construction of a maximum of 4096 distinct VLANs. In an Ethernet B-RAS application environment, however, this VLAN limit is inadequate. A stacked VLAN (S-VLAN) provides a two-level VLAN tag structure, which extends the VLAN ID space to more than 16 million VLANs.

Creating an S-VLAN requires the use of a second encapsulation tag. The router performs decapsulation twice, once to get the S-VLAN tag and once to get the VLAN tag. This double tagging approach enables more than 16 million address possibilities, which more than satisfies the scaling requirement for Ethernet B-RAS applications.

VLAN and S-VLAN subinterfaces can coexist over the same VLAN major interface. You configure S-VLANs in the same way that you configure VLANs, with the addition of certain commands.

Note: See JunosE Release Notes, Appendix A, System Maximums for S-VLAN limitations.

Like VLANs, all S-VLAN subinterfaces use the MAC address of the Ethernet interface over which they are configured. For more information about assigning unique MAC address to the S-VLAN subinterface when assigning VLAN or S-VLAN IDs, see VLAN Overview.