How Switches Work

Industrial Connectivity
Introducing Basic Layer 2
Switching and Bridge Functionality
Outline
• Overview
• Ethernet Switches and Bridges
• Frame Transmission Modes
• How Switches and Bridges Learn Source MAC Addresses
• How Switches and Bridges Forward and Filter Frames
• Summary
PROPRIETARY
1
Ethernet Switches and Bridges
• Address learning
• Forwarding the filtering decisions
• Loop avoidance
PROPRIETARY
Frame Transmission Modes
Cut-Through
• Switch checks destination
address and immediately
begins forwarding frame
Store and Forward
• Complete frame is received and
checked before forwarding
Fragment-Free
• Switch checks the first 64 bytes,
then immediately begins
forwarding frame
PROPRIETARY
3
MAC Address Table
• The initial MAC address table is empty.
PROPRIETARY
4
Learning Addresses
• Station A sends a frame to station C.
• The switch caches the MAC address of station A to port E0 by
learning the source address of data frames.
• The frame from station A to station C is flooded out to all ports
except port E0 (unknown unicasts are flooded).
PROPRIETARY
5
Learning Addresses (cont.)
• Station D sends a frame to station C.
• The switch caches the MAC address of station D to port E3
by learning the source address of data frames.
• The frame from station D to station C is flooded out to all
ports except port E3 (unknown unicasts are flooded).
PROPRIETARY
6
Filtering Frames
• Station A sends a frame to station C.
• The destination is known; the frame is not flooded.
PROPRIETARY
7
Filtering Frames (cont.)
• Station A sends a frame to station B.
• The switch has the address for station B in the
MAC address table.
PROPRIETARY
8
Broadcast and Multicast Frames
• Station D sends a broadcast or multicast frame.
• Broadcast and multicast frames are flooded to all
ports other than the originating port.
PROPRIETARY
9
Summary
• Ethernet switches and bridges increase the available
bandwidth of a network by creating dedicated network
segments and interconnecting the segments.
• Switches and bridges use one of three operating modes
to transmit frames: store and forward, cut-through and
fragment-free.
• Switches and bridges maintain a MAC address table to
store address-to-port mappings so that they can
determine the locations of connected devices.
• When a frame arrives with a known destination address,
the frame is forwarded only on the specific port
connected to the destination station.
PROPRIETARY
10
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