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VLAN + Subnet Designer
Name your VLANs and say how many devices each holds. It allocates the subnets, proposes gateways and DHCP ranges, then checks the whole plan for the mistakes that take a network down.
Local toolYour network plan stays in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged, or sent to any server.
VLANs
Validation
Address space
What it checks, and why each one matters
Allocation is the easy half. These are the faults the validator looks for, and what each one actually does to a live network.
- Duplicate VLAN ID. Within a switching domain a VLAN ID identifies exactly one broadcast domain. Two definitions means two designs fighting over one.
- Overlapping subnets. Hosts get addresses that look local and are not reachable. The symptom is intermittent and extremely hard to trace.
- DHCP range covering the gateway. The scope eventually leases the router's own address to a workstation and the subnet loses its default route. This is the single most common way a working network is broken by a configuration change.
- DHCP range outside the subnet, or including the network or broadcast address. The scope hands out addresses that cannot work.
- Gateway outside its subnet, or set to the network or broadcast address.
- Insufficient capacity, and a warning when a subnet is above 85% full, because there is no room for a visitor's laptop or a replacement printer.
- VLAN 1 carrying user traffic, and VLAN IDs in the 1002–1005 range that many switches reserve.
Gateways default to the first usable address. Last usable is offered because plenty of sites use that convention instead; what matters is consistency, not which one.
Related tools
VLSM Designer does the addressing without the VLAN layer. Subnet Calculator inspects any one prefix. VLAN Planner documents VLANs you already have.