ABSTRACT
Local Area Networks (LANs) are configured to have switches that maintain a table called the Content Addressable Memory (CAM), which is used to map individual MAC (Media Access Control) addresses on the network to the physical ports on the switch. The CAM table allows the switch to direct data out of the physical port to exactly where the recipient is located, as opposed to indiscriminately broadcasting the data out of all ports like a hub. The advantage of this method is that data is bridged exclusively to the network segment containing the computer that the data is specifically destined for. The following screenshot shows an example of entries in the CAM table of a switch where four hosts are connected to the switch. For example, the first host (whose MAC address is 00:0F:1F:C0:EB:49) is connected to Port #1 (interface: Fast Ethernet 0/1) on the switch.
