Ethernet: network topology

Posted by aix on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by aix
Published on 2010-12-21T15:21:51Z Indexed on 2010/12/21 15:55 UTC
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Filed under:

ethernet

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switches

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protocols

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network-protocols

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topology

Consider a standard GigE network switch. In order to do the switching, presumably it needs to maintain a map of MAC addresses of all things that exist on the network to its (switch's) port numbers.

How does it maintain such a map?
What are the protocols involved?
If I change the topology of one part of the network, does the entire network get notified or do things get discovered "lazily" (i.e. on first need)?

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