The most recent physical topology discovery knowledge of the Ethernet network is the key to network management tasks. Virtual LANs (VLANs)
IntroductionNetwork topology is the methods and forms of the connection between the nodes in the network. Network topology discovery is important for the establishment of network simulation model and the network performance measurements and server location and fault analysis, is the basic premise of effective network management, is also a important scale to measure the success or failure of the business network management system.A physical LAN according to the different rules is logically divided into different subnets by VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network), the subnets are in different broadcast domain, and are not limited by physical location. In actual network, VLAN technology is widely used. A switch may have more than one VLAN in running network, so when switches interconnected, that need to transfer more than one VLAN information. But the 802.1Q of each manufacturer is not the same, so often there are some problems for interconnection. In addition, core routers and backbone switch and the secondary node switches and so on, due to some reasons such as management and security, the management IP address and the IP address of the cascade user or device are not in the same VLAN.Layer-2 network topology discovery involves network layer devices, namely layer-2 switch. Since they are devices based on the data link layer, so using the traditional TCP/IP approach is difficult to find the connection between them. The main network management tool developers at home and abroad have added layer-2 topology discovery into their products. However, these tools are based on the related products of manufacturer without generality. For these reasons, we propose the algorithm to automatically discover the physical network topology across multi-VLANs and apply to network devices from different manufactures [1,2].