Users Guide

MAC Addressing and Forwarding 1151

MAC Addressing and Forwarding

Dell EMC Networking N-Series Switches

Dell EMC Networking N-Series switches implement a MAC Learning Bridge

in compliance with IEEE 802.1Q. The N-Series switches implement

independent VLAN learning (IVL). Dynamically learned MAC addresses are

used to filter the set of ports on which a frame is forwarded within a VLAN;

that is, the destination MAC address and ingress VLAN for a frame entering

the switch are looked up in the MAC address table and if, a match is found,

the frame is forwarded out the matching port(s). If no match is found, the

frame is flooded out all ports in the VLAN except for the ingress port.

This chapter describes the Layer-2 MAC address table the switch uses to

forward L2 frames between ports.

The topics covered in this chapter include:

• MAC Address Table Overview

• Default MAC Address Table Values

• Managing the MAC Address Table (Web)

• Managing the MAC Address Table (CLI)

MAC Address Table Overview

The MAC address table keeps track of the MAC addresses that are associated

with each port to allow the switch to forward unicast traffic through the

appropriate port. This table is sometimes called the bridge table or the

forwarding database.

How Is the Address Table Populated?

The MAC address table can contain two types of addresses:

• Static: The address has been manually configured and does not age out.

• Dynamic: The address has been automatically learned by the switch and

will age out if no frames with the learned MAC address (and VLAN) have

been forwarded by the switch during the aging time interval.