Networking Fundamentals

Frame forwarding process

I will summarize this process here and then walk through an example. When a switch receives data from a device, it follows this process:

1. It checks to see if the source MAC address is in its MAC table (also known as the Content Addressable Memory (CAM) table):
   • If it isn't, the switch updates the table by specifying which interface the sender's MAC address is on
2. Then, it looks to see if there is an entry for the destination MAC address:
   • If there is, the frame is forwarded internally to the interface that's listed, which and then transmits it to the destination device.
   • If there is no entry for the destination MAC address, the switch will flood or broadcast the frame from all its interfaces, except the interface ...