A switch builds a MAC address table by listening to traffic and learning which MAC addresses are on which ports. What is this process called?

A switch builds a MAC address table by listening to traffic and learning which MAC addresses are on which ports. What is this process called?

• A. MAC Address Learning
• B. ARP Resolution
• C. Spanning Tree Protocol
• D. VLAN Trunking

Answer: (A)

The switch learns where devices live by watching the source MAC address on every frame it receives and recording that MAC with the port the frame came from. This dynamic mapping, stored in the MAC address table (often called a CAM table), lets the switch forward future frames directly to the correct port. If the destination MAC is known, the frame is sent to that specific port; if it isn’t, the switch floods the frame to all ports in the same network segment until it learns the destination. This behavior is what we call MAC address learning. ARPs are about mapping IP addresses to MAC addresses and operate at a higher layer, not how a switch builds its forwarding table. Spanning Tree Protocol prevents switching loops, and VLAN trunking handles carrying multiple VLANs over a single link; neither describes the process of learning MAC-to-port mappings.

The switch learns where devices live by watching the source MAC address on every frame it receives and recording that MAC with the port the frame came from. This dynamic mapping, stored in the MAC address table (often called a CAM table), lets the switch forward future frames directly to the correct port. If the destination MAC is known, the frame is sent to that specific port; if it isn’t, the switch floods the frame to all ports in the same network segment until it learns the destination. This behavior is what we call MAC address learning.

ARPs are about mapping IP addresses to MAC addresses and operate at a higher layer, not how a switch builds its forwarding table. Spanning Tree Protocol prevents switching loops, and VLAN trunking handles carrying multiple VLANs over a single link; neither describes the process of learning MAC-to-port mappings.