Sections & Objectives

 Ethernet Protocol
• Explain the operation of Ethernet.
• Explain how the Ethernet sublayers are related to the frame fields.
• Describe the Ethernet MAC address

• Explain how a switch operates.

• Explain how a switch builds its MAC address table and forwards frames.
• Describe switch forwarding methods and port settings available on Layer2 switch ports.

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EthernetProtocol

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Ethernet Frame
Ethernet Encapsulation
 Ethernet is the most widely used LAN technology today.
• DefinedintheIEEE802.2and802.3standards.
• Itsupportsdatabandwidthsof10Mb/s,100Mb/s,1000Mb/s (1
Gb/s),10,000 Mb/s (10 Gb/s),40,000 Mb/s (40 Gb/s),and
100,000Mb/s(100Gb/s).

 Ethernet operates in the data link layer and the physical

layer.

 Ethernet relies on the two separate sub layers of the data

link layer to operate, the Logical Link Control (LLC) and the
MAC sub layers.

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Ethernet Frame
Ethernet Encapsulation (Cont.)
 The Ethernet LLC sub layer handles the
communication between the upper layers and the
lower layers. It is implemented in software, and its
implementation is independent of the hardware.

 The MAC sublayer constitutes the lower sublayer of the

data link layer. MAC is implemented by hardware,
typically in the computer NIC.

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Ethernet Frame
MAC Sublayer
 The MAC sublayer has two primary responsibilities:
• Data encapsulation
• Media access control

 Data encapsulation provides three primary functions:

• Frame delimiting
• Addressing
• Error detection

 Media access control is responsible for the placement of frames on the media and the removal of
Frames from the media. This sublayer communicates directly with the physical layer.

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Ethernet Frame
Ethernet Evolution
 Since1973, Ethernet standards have evolved specifying faster and more flexible versions of the
technology.

 Early versions of Ethernet were relatively slow at10Mbps.

 The latest versions of Ethernet operate at 10 Giga bits per second and faster.

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Ethernet Frame
Ethernet Frame Fields
 The minimum Ethernet frame size
from Destination MAC address to
FCS is 64 by tes and the
maximum is 1518 bytes.

 Frames less than 64 bytes are called a “collision fragment” or “runt frame” and are automatically
discarded by receiving stations. Frames greater than 1500 by tes of data are considered “jumbo”
or “baby giant frames”.

 If the size of a transmitted frame is less than the minimum or greater than the maximum,
the receiving device drops the frame.

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Ethernet MAC Addresses
MAC Addresses and Hexadecimal
 An Ethernet MAC address is a 48-bit binary value expressed as12 hexadecimal digits (4 bits per
hexadecimal digit).

 Hexadecimal is used to represent Ethernet MAC

addresses and IP Version 6 addresses.
• Hexadecimal is a base sixteen system using
the numbers 0 to 9 and the letters A to F.
• It is easier to express a value as a single
hexadecimal digit than as four binary bits.
• Hexadecimal is usually represented in text by the value
Preceded by 0x (E.g.,0x73).

 Convert the decimal or hexadecimal value to binary, and then to convert the binary value to
either decimal or hexadecimal as needed.

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Ethernet MAC Addresses
MAC Addresses: Ethernet Identity
 MAC addresses were created to identify the actual source and destination.
• The MAC address rules are established by IEEE.
• The IEEE assigns the vendor a 3-byte (24-bit) code, called the Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI).

 IEEE requires a vendor to follow two simple

rules:
• All MAC addresses assigned to a NIC or
other Ethernet device must use that
vendor's assigned OUI as the first 3 bytes.
• All MAC addresses with the same OUI must
be assigned a unique value in the last 3bytes.

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Ethernet MAC Addresses
Frame Processing
 The MAC address is often referred to as a burned-in address (BIA) meaning the address is
encoded in to the ROM chip permanently. When the computer starts up, the first thing the NIC
does is copy the MAC address from ROM into RAM.

 When a device is forwarding a message to an

Ethernet network, it attaches header
information to the frame.

 The header information contains the source

And destination MAC address.

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Ethernet MAC Addresses
MAC Address Representations
 Use the ip config/all command on a Windows host to identify the MAC address of an Ethernet
adapter. On a MAC or Linux host, the if config command is used.

 Depending on the device and the operating system, you will see various representations of MAC
addresses.

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Ethernet MAC Addresses
Unicast MAC Address
 A unicast MAC address is the
unique address used when a frame
is sent from a single transmitting
device to a single destination device.

 For a unicast packet to be sent and

received a destination IP address
must be in the IP packet header and
a corresponding destination MAC
address must also be present in the
Ethernet frame header.

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Ethernet MAC Addresses
Broadcast MAC Address
 Many network protocols, such as
DHCP and ARP, use
broadcasts.
 A broadcast packet contains a
destination IPv4 address that has all
ones (1s) in the host portion
indicating that all hosts on that local
network will receive and process the
packet.

 When the IPv4 broadcast packet is

encapsulated in the Ethernet frame,
the destination MAC address is the
broadcast MAC address of FF-FF-
FF-FF-FF-FF in hexadecimal (48
ones in binary).
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Ethernet MAC Addresses
Multicast MAC Address
 Multicast addresses allow a
source device to send a packet to
a group of devices.
• Devices in a multicast group are
assigned a multicast group IP
address in the range of
224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255
(IPv6
Multicast addresses begin with
FF00::/8).
• The multicast IP address
requires a corresponding
multicast MAC address that
begins with 01-00- 5E in
hexadecimal.

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