How To Configure 802.1q VLAN Tagging on RHEL / CentOS 7/8 & Fedora Interface

VLAN tagging is a method of handling more than one VLAN on a network port. VLAN tagging is used to tell which packet belongs to which VLAN as packets traverse a network medium. In this guide, we will configure 802.1q VLAN Tagging in a Network interface on RHEL / CentOS and Fedora system.

To create a VLAN, an interface is created on top of another interface referred to as the parent interface. The VLAN interface will tag packets with the VLAN ID as they pass through the interface, and returning packets will be untagged.

Before doing any configuration, ensure 8021q module is loaded.

sudo modprobe --first-time 8021q
modinfo 8021q

In this example, I’ll configure an enp6s0 interface on the server.

$ ip link  show  dev enp6s0
2: enp6s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 38:90:a5:14:96:54 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

You can use the network manager command line tool – nmcli to accomplish this or directly edit network configuration files.

Manually Edit Configuration files

Edit the parent interface configuration file and set like below.

$ sudo vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp6s0
TYPE=Ethernet
NAME=enp6s0
DEVICE=enp6s0
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes

As seen above, we’ve set the interface to come up on boot and we don’t assign IP information here.

Now configure the VLAN interface. The configuration file name should be the parent interface plus a . character plus the VLAN ID number. In my setup, the VLAN ID is 21, and the parent interface is enp6s0, so the configuration file name should be:

sudo vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp6s0.21

All network configuration information is added into this file.

DEVICE=enp6s0.21
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
IPADDR=172.10.10.11
GATEWAY=172.10.10.1
DNS1=172.10.10.1
DNS2=8.8.8.8
PREFIX=24
VLAN=yes

After making the change, restart the networking service in order for the changes to take effect.

sudo systemctl restart network

Alternatively, manually bring up the interface.

sudo ifdown enp6s0 && sudo ifup enp6s0
sudo ifup enp6s0.21

Confirm IP address information for the interface.

$ ip ad | grep enp6s0
2: enp6s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
49: enp6s0.21@enp6s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    inet 172.10.10.11/24 brd 172.10.10.255 scope global noprefixroute enp6s0.21

Using NMCLI Tool

The same configurations can be done purely from the command-line interface. For this method, the NetworkManager service should be running.

$ systemctl status NetworkManager

Check current network configurations.

$ nmcli con show

To create an 802.1Q VLAN interface on Ethernet interface enp6s0, with VLAN interface VLAN21 and ID 21, issue a command as follows:

$ nmcli con add type vlan con-name VLAN21 ifname VLAN21 dev enp6s0 id 21

You can then assign an IP address to the VLAN Interface.

nmcli connection modify VLAN21 ipv4.addresses 172.10.10.11/24 \
ipv4.method manual ipv4.gateway 172.10.10.1 \
ipv4.dns 172.10.10.1 +ipv4.dns 8.8.8.8

To view all the parameters associated with the VLAN created above, issue a command as follows.

$ nmcli connection show VLAN21

You have successfully configured VLAN tagging on an interface in RHEL / CentOS or Fedora server.

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