I have a few questions about vlans though, witch Cisco, what does "switchport access" do is it for tagging and trunk access?

And also on a vlan, do you need to config a default gateway since we're only dealing with switches? The no-ip thing is still unclear too, is it like a walled garden?

I'd like to take a swing at this, if I may...

"switchport access" is used to assign a particular port to a specific vlan. ie, "switchport access vlan 5". That switch port and its attached device are now part of vlan 5.

"switchport mode access" designates the port as an access port whereas "switchport mode trunk" makes it a trunk port.

Default gateways, i believe, are only necessary in a vlan if you're doing inter-vlan routing. In a router-on-a-stick configuration, for example, where one physical interface on the router can represent many logical sub-interfaces, the gateway for the vlan would be the ip addy of the sub-interface that is assigned to that vlan.

A vlan is really just a layer-2 network with the added bonus of being in its own broadcast domain. So, ip addresses aren't needed unless routing between vlans IS needed.

I hope I said that right.