Summary: Switches can have multiple vlans. When we connect switches together we use 802.1q trunks (or older ISL trunks) to run multiple vlans over one physical link. With either trunking protocol, a tag is added to the ethernet frame with the vlan information. ISL is an older Cisco-proprietary trunking protocol. Newer switches do not even support ISL. Newer switches use the 802.1q vendor-indepentend trunking protocol. Cisco switches also speak the dynamic trunk protocol (DTP) to dynamically negotiate whether to enable a trunk.
