For understanding how the port monitor works, it is first important to understand the way that a LAN switch works. A LAN switch forwards packets in the following way:
- The LAN switch continuously learns the MAC addresses of the devices connected to it
- Now, if a packet is sent to a destination MAC, it will be forwarded only to the physical port that the switch has learned that this MAC address is coming from
- If a broadcast is sent, it will be forwarded to all ports of the switch
- If a multicast is sent, and CGMP or IGMP is disabled, it will be forwarded to all ports of the switch (CGMP and IGMP are protocols that enable multicast packets to be forwarded only to devices on a specific multicast group)
- If a packet is sent to a ...