Overview of GVRP

Definition

The Generic Attribute Registration Protocol (GARP) provides an attribute propagation mechanism. The GARP VLAN Registration Protocol (GVRP) is a GARP application used to register and deregister VLAN attribute.

GARP identifies applications based on destination MAC addresses. IEEE Std 802.1Q assigns 01-80-C2-00-00-21 to GVRP.

Purpose

To create or delete VLANs on all devices on a network, a network administrator must manually create or delete the VLANs on each device. When a network is too complex for a network administrator to know the network topology in a short time or when many VLANs are configured on the network, the manual configuration workload is enormous and configuration errors will occur. GVRP can be configured on the network to implement automatic VLAN registration and deregistration in this case.

Benefits

Through GVRP, VLAN attributes of one device can be propagated throughout the entire switching network. GVRP enables network devices to dynamically deliver, register, and propagate VLAN attributes, reducing workload of the network administrator and ensuring correct configuration.