ARP Switches

hi there,

so a switch keeps track off wot for ip's / mac adresses are linked to a port. So it will lead to a faster network because not all the packets arive by all computers, only the one's who supposted to get them.

Does it do this bij arp? just link is a normal computer?

if so, can ya manual change those arp entries? Is this router specific?


Thanks in Advance,
Sjoek

Most switches only operate at the data link layer so they are only aware of "MAC" addresses, routers are the devices that bind IP addresses to the interfaces. And to answer your question, yes you can create a static MAC table for a switch. Now I may be wrong, but Im not sure that layer 2 switches use the ARP protocol, but then again I could be wrong... :roll:

ok, so

switches remember there port and the mac address

you know how to manual change / add those arp entries on a switch?

Sjoek

ARP itself is a layer 3 protocol working directly on top of data link layer to find out the IP address of a known hardware address. The ARP table contains a mapping between the layer 3 [IP] address and layer 2 [MAC] ddress. So obviously layer 2 switches do not use ARP broadcasts. And these switches do not maintain an ARP table. They only maintain a forwarding table containing MAC addresses and port nos. If an unknown hardware address is found as the destination of a frame, the switch will do a layer 2 broadcast of that packet - this is called flooding.

I hope the above information is sufficient.

So, in conclusion;

(Regular) Switches map MAC address to ports.
Computers(and routers) map IP addresses to MAC addresses, using an ARP table.

Correct?

Yes, as long as the device in question is able to operate at the minimum of layer 3(network) of the OSI model. And as for configuring the switches, that is all vendor specific.