Migrating from a TP-Link Managed Switch to Juniper EX2200

I hit the VLAN 1 failure pattern while migrating from a consumer TP-Link managed switch to a Juniper EX2200. The configs looked equivalent, but the behavior was not.

Consumer switches are forgiving:

  • Trunk ports behave like access ports with extras
  • “Allow all VLANs” plus PVID feels safe
  • End devices often work on trunks accidentally

On the EX2200:

  • Trunks are for VLAN-aware devices only
  • Native VLAN is not a substitute for access ports
  • VLAN 1 must not be implicitly tagged
  • Ambiguous configs are accepted but behave differently

The fix was mostly mental model. Once I treated trunks as trunk-only and made VLAN intent explicit everywhere, VLAN 1 behaved and DHCP stopped failing silently.

For the working port and VLAN patterns, see: Juniper EX2200 VLAN Reference.

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