Think of cars as traffic in the network, and the road (and all of it's lanes) as the switch. A vlan allows the cars on that road to be separated from the rest of the traffic, so a vlan is like a toll road pass.  The cars on Vlan1 toll road will be in a different separate lane that people on the vlan2 toll road. Even though they are all in the same road, each vlan has it own different lane for specific type of traffic. The benefits, much like a toll road, it helps move traffic more efficiently from one point to another. Also toll roads, have barriers to keep other traffic from joining it, if you don't have the right tag, forget about joining that toll road.  ... View more