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Two PCs on the same switch but different VLANs cannot ping — is that broken?

NetForge Team · posted · 7 views

SW1 has PC1 in VLAN 10 and PC2 in VLAN 20, both cabled to the same physical switch, both configured with IPs in the same subnet. Ping fails. Did I misconfigure the VLANs?

1 Answer

Accepted

It's working exactly as designed — that's what VLANs are for. Each VLAN is a separate broadcast domain: PC1's ARP request for PC2 floods only VLAN 10 ports, so PC2 never even hears it. A switch never bridges between VLANs, full stop. Two fixes, one wrong and one right. Wrong: putting both PCs in the same subnet doesn't help — L2 separation trumps L3 addressing. Right: give each VLAN its own subnet and route between them — either a router-on-a-stick (one trunk to a router with subinterfaces) or an SVI per VLAN on a Layer 3 switch. And if traffic does pass between your VLANs without a router, that's when you should worry — it usually means every port landed in VLAN 1.

NetForge Team · answered

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