broadcast across links that do not need to carry that traffic. VTP pruning uses VLAN
advertisements to determine when a trunk connection is flooding traffic needlessly. By default,
a trunk connection carries traffic for all VLANs in the VTP management domain. Commonly,
some switches in an enterprise network do not have local ports configured in each VLAN. In
Figure 4-31, Switches 1 and 4 support ports statically configured in VLAN 10. As illustrated,
with VTP pruning enabled, when Station A sends a broadcast, the broadcast is flooded only
toward any switch with ports assigned to VLAN 10. As a result, broadcast traffic from Station
A is not forwarded to Switches 3, 5, and 6 because traffic for VLAN 10 has been pruned on the
links indicated on Switches 2 and 4.
that the traffic must use to access the appropriate network devices. VTP pruning is one of the
two most compelling reasons to use VTP--the other is to make VLAN configuration easier and
more consistent.
covered. This section focuses on VTP configuration for client and server and shows an example
configuration for two switches: one the VTP server and one a VTP client.
Mode
synchronizes VLAN configuration
information with other switches
in a trunk
using configuration commands