Designating Ethernet Port Type

Ethernet ports are defined as one of the following port types:

  • Trunk Ports
  • Access Ports
  • General Ports

All three port types are used to define how to manage the following two aspects of VLAN processing:

  • Which VLANs are processed vs. dropped
  • What to do with untagged packets (in other words, Native VLAN)

For most RUCKUS APs, you can set which ports you want to be your Access, Trunk and General Ports from the Unleashed web interface, as long as at least one port on each AP is designated as a Trunk Port.

Note: By default, all ports are enabled as Trunk Ports with Untag VLAN set as 1 (except for Wall Plate APs, whose four front-bottom ports are enabled as Access Ports by default, and whose rear port is a Trunk Port and is non-configurable).

If configured as an Access Port, all untagged ingress traffic is sent to the configured Untag VLAN, and all egress traffic is sent untagged. If configured as a Trunk Port, all untagged ingress traffic is the configured Untag VLAN (by default, 1), and all VLAN-tagged traffic on VLANs from 1 through 4094 will be seen when present on the network.

The default Untag VLAN for each port is VLAN 1. Change the Untag VLAN to:

  • Segment all ingress traffic on this Access Port to a specific VLAN
  • Redefine the Native VLAN on this Trunk Port to match your network configuration

In this section:

  1. Trunk Ports
  2. Access Ports
    Access ports provide access to the network and can be configured as members of a specific VLAN, thereby separating the traffic on these ports from traffic on other VLANs.
  3. General Ports
    General ports are user-defined ports that can have any combination of up to 20 VLAN IDs assigned. General ports function similarly to Trunk ports, except that where Trunk ports pass all VLAN traffic, General ports pass only the VLAN traffic that is defined by the user.
Parent topic: Configuring AP Ethernet Ports