A LAN is like the interstate or highway. Making a LAN into a Virtual (VLAN) is like dividing the lanes up into separate types of traffic based off predefined addresses/subnets. It would be like taking a 4 lane interstate and saying all traffic that is a sports car driving 80+ mph is only allowed in the far left lane. Sedans, family vehicles are allowed in the left center lane driving 60-80 mph. The right center lane would be for utility trucks, company trucks, or delivery trucks driving 60 mph. The far right lane would be for heavy vehicles such as semi trucks, etc going 50 mph or under. This helps keep traffic flowing and no bottlenecks as all similar traffic and speed is required in each lane, and no lane hopping. So for a network we would create a VLAN for security camera systems, VLAN for guest network, VLAN for internal PCs, VLAN for servers, etc. This opens up more space for more devices and keeps the network flowing smoothly at the given rate it should, much like the interstate example above.
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