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I've recently inherited an all wireless network that has every single client in the native VLAN, at multiple sites. The site in question currently has around 550 clients on a /22, which I feel is causing issues during peak times with an alarming number of broadcasts.

So my question is: Will splitting this up into separate VLANs while allowing every VLAN to be passed along the trunk ports (All AP switchports are setup as Trunk ports), and placing certain clients on their preferred VLAN, improve performance?

With Cisco Meraki APs you can create group policies that will tag an individual client to a particular VLAN

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    It is always prefered from both performance and security perspective to have smaller broadcast domain
    – Mr.lock
    Commented Feb 27, 2017 at 15:37
  • Did any answer help you? If so, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer. Alternatively, you could provide and accept your own answer.
    – Ron Maupin ♦
    Commented Aug 16, 2017 at 23:02

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I would segment the VLANs based on the local structure. e.g.:

  • Floor Level1 => VLAN101
  • Floor Level2 => VLAN102

This is a quite static approach in segmenting your network and much more simple to implement than using group policys. In my opinion troubleshooting is also simplified in this approach.

Group policys are great for an organisation-based segmentation of your network, but in my opinon unnecessary if only the size of your broadcast-domain is your aim.

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  • Thanks for the response. The real reason I'm using GP is due to the fact I want to separate our production devices into their own VLAN, and they reside in different locations throughout the building. Prod => VLAN100, General => VLAN200, Mobile => VLAN0300, IT => VLAN400, etc. Then I just assign each client based on the categories above.
    – Dalon
    Commented Feb 27, 2017 at 20:35
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    @Dalon, we now live in a layer-3 world, and it really doesn't make sense to separate user groups by VLAN. It makes more sense to separate them geographically. A best practice now is to only have one switch per VLAN. You could have multiple VLANs on a switch, but one VLAN only exists on a single switch. This prevents STP problems.
    – Ron Maupin ♦
    Commented Feb 28, 2017 at 14:20
  • To add to this, what I tend to do is users and printers are on separate vlans, per building. For instance, each of my sites is a /16, broken into /24s as needed. If building A has users on vlan 10-10.1.10.0/24 and printers on vlan 20-10.1.20.0/24, then building B is vlan 11 and 21 (increasing 3rd octet in each vlan appropriately). set up your vlans and subnets in a manner that works for your environment.
    – Rex Sheffield
    Commented May 29, 2017 at 21:58
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In general 550 is great number for single network; splitting will make it more healthy. Separating your network into VLANs will reduce number of broadcasts clients receive, but not necessarily will reduce broadcasts on AP itself.

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