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