It’s possible to view all learned MAC addresses for a specific VLAN. Here’s the output on my switch for interface g1/0/9: sw1#show mac address-table interface g1/0/9ġ03 81 DYNAMIC Gi1/0/9 View MAC addresses for a specific VLAN The command syntax is: show mac address-table This is useful for troubleshooting and verifying where a host might be located. What if we want to verify what MAC address is seen off an individual port. Total Mac Addresses for this criterion: 22 Viewing the MAC address seen on a specific interface The dynamic MAC addresses on my switch: sw1#show mac address-table dynamic Next, we use a show command to view the MAC address table of all dynamically learned addresses: show mac address-table dynamic The address table includes these types of addresses: Dynamic address: a source MAC address that the switch learns and then ages when it is not in use.
All MAC addresses in the address table are associated with one or more ports. Gi1/0/1 connected 129 a-full a-100 10/100/1000BaseTX The MAC address table contains address information that the switch uses to forward traffic between ports. sw1#show interface status | include connected
#DYNAMIC MAC ADDRESS LEARNING HOW TO#
How to view the Cisco MAC address tableįirst, let’s see what’s connected to my Cisco switch. What happens if the host changes to a different port? The MAC address table is updated accordingly. Static address: a manually entered unicast address that does. What happens if the host is no longer connected? The host’s MAC address remains in the table until it ages out. Dynamic address: a source MAC address that the switch learns and then ages when it is not in use. The switch wants the host with the destination MAC address to respond. What happens if a destination MAC address is not in the MAC address table? The switch must flood the traffic out of all ports in what’s called unknown unicast flooding. When the network switch receives the traffic destined for Host B, it knows to forward that traffic destined to interface g1/0/27 because the MAC address table lists Host B’s MAC address for interface g1/0/27. Host A has a fictitious MAC address of AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA and it wants to send traffic to Host B with a fictitious MAC address of BB:BB:BB:BB:BB:BB. Without the MAC address table, traffic would be forwarded out each port, like a hub (hopefully you haven’t used one of those in a long time.) MAC Address Table This makes it efficient to forward traffic directly to a host. The MAC address table is a way to map each port to a MAC address. Whether 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps Ethernet ports, MAC address learning is performed the same way.Įach host connecting to a switch port will have its MAC address entered into the switch’s MAC address table. We don’t think much about connecting our hosts to a Cisco switch. We’ll review the MAC address table on a Cisco switch to learn how a device to port mapping is created and why it is needed. Network switching fundamentals are required for CCNP Enterprise Core studies.