Description: The textual name of this VLAN, this is the identifier that the user of a configuration utility will be using. Using a VLAN ID for the index and resolving to a name would be easier for an individual switch. However, the user will not (and should not) use this ID. The problem would then be how to resolve an ID to a Name, given that network manager needs to know this for all devices. Using the name as the index allows a management application to have a list of names and each network device resolves that to a locally significant ID. This means however, if the user configures, via a local interface, two switches with VLANs that have the same name, the network manager will assume that they are the same VLAN.

In the future, when the 802.1Q standard comes out, there will be a standard way of maintaining globally unique VLAN IDs because these will be used as the VLAN tag. At that time the index into this table should become the VLAN tag.