SWITCH

Is Destination MAC known?

• Switches forward frames based on Destination MACs. However, how they learn MACs or
what switch will do if it doesn’t know where the packet must be forwarded?
• High Level Logic of a Switch
• Packets come to switchport
• Switch checks Destination MAC Address of the packet
• It looks its CAM Table, formerly known MAC Table
• If it finds destination MAC address on the table, it forwards that frame to related interface
• If it doesn’t see DMAC on its CAM, forwards the packet to all interfaces, except the
interface that packet comes in.
Now, MAC Address is learned
• Switches learn MAC Addresses using frames’ Source MAC Address field. When a
packet comes to a switchport, switch populates a MAC + Interface Binding on its
CAM Table.
• Based on the information above; when a switch floods out packets to all interfaces,
it learns Destination Computer’s MAC Address and Interface Number and create a
field on its CAM Table if remote host replies that packet. Second time, when a client
wants to reach the same destination computer, the switch will not flood the packet
to all interfaces. It just simply looks at its CAM Table and finds MAC + Interface
MAC Address Table has aging-time. When this timer reaches to maximum

for each MAC Address, it will be deleted from CAM Table .

STP protocol
• L'algorithme de « spanning tree minimum » garantit
l'unicité du chemin entre deux points du réseau tout en
n'interdisant pas les câbles en surnombre. Pour cela, il
bloque administrativement certains ports des
commutateurs (switch).