Question : How many hosts in a VLAN Broadcast Domain?

I am preparing to convert our schools to private IP addresses and Vlans to support VOIP. From what I have researched the recommeded number of hosts in a brodcast domain should be no more than 256. I am wondering if what I am reading is outdated given the fact that most networks including ours is a switched 100 mb full duplexing environment as opposed to a 10mb shared medium network. Additionaly since IPX and Netbui are no longer prevalent in networks this also reduces broadcasts.

If I were to segment all of my vlans into 256 clients it becomes a management issue with so many vlans and DHCP scopes and troubleshooting campuses that have multible vlans on the same campus with the small support staff we have (1 administrator and 4 PC techs to service 19 sites, 50+ servers and 3000 clients). So I am looking for feedback from the real world Networking guys especially those running VoIP. How many clients In your vlans and what has been your experience.

Thanks for the help

Mark

Answer : How many hosts in a VLAN Broadcast Domain?

The smaller you can keep your broadcast domains, the more efficient your network. It's as simple as that.
It is, however, a general rule of thumb to limit IP devices on one network to <500, but I've seen networks humming along with upwards of 1000 hosts. I personally would not push it that far if it was my network. Our current campus has no more than 500 hosts using 255.255.254.0 masks in each VLAN. Only 5 or 6 vlans is easily managable.
How many clients do you potentially have at any one of your 19 sites?
I don't think that VLAN's are that much of an administrative overhead and allow for some creative uses to quickly identify or segregate individual hosts as well as create simple security zones between students/faculty etc..