Question

Explain how a layer 2 switch learns the addresses of devices that are connected to its ports and how it forwards data. Your explanation should begin when the switch is first introduced into a network and conclude when it has received data from many devices.

Write no more than 250 words.

Answer 1

The communication in a network segment is achieved with the help of the MAC address of the device connected to the network. A switch is an intermediate networking device used to connected various host devices in the network. The switch maintain a MAC address table in which details of all the MAC address of the devices connected to the corresponding switch ports are stored.

When a frame is received by the switch from a port then it will first search it its MAC table for the corresponding MAC address of the host and the port number. If the details is found then the frame is send to the particular port. If the entry is not found in the table then the switch send the flood packet to all the active ports other than the port from which the packet was received. The host with the corresponding address will then accept the frame and the corresponding entry is updated in the MAC table of the switch.

Thus the switches keeps on updating the information in the MAC table based on the new information available about the host. SO switches will have all the MAC addresses of all the host connected to a particular switch port.