200-301 · Question #967
What are two reasons a switch experiences frame flooding? (Choose two.)
The correct answer is A. A defective patch cable is connected to the switch port B. Topology changes are occurring within spanning-tree. Frame flooding occurs when a switch cannot determine the destination of a frame, often due to physical layer issues like a defective cable causing interface instability or logical changes such as Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) topology recalculations flushing the MAC address table.
Question
What are two reasons a switch experiences frame flooding? (Choose two.)
Options
- AA defective patch cable is connected to the switch port
- BTopology changes are occurring within spanning-tree
- CAn aged MAC (able entry is causing excessive updates
- DPort-security is configured globally
- EThe forwarding table has overflowed
How the community answered
(34 responses)- A91% (31)
- D3% (1)
- E6% (2)
Why each option
Frame flooding occurs when a switch cannot determine the destination of a frame, often due to physical layer issues like a defective cable causing interface instability or logical changes such as Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) topology recalculations flushing the MAC address table.
A defective patch cable can cause an interface to flap (go up/down), leading to frequent MAC address table updates and potentially flushing learned MAC addresses for that port, resulting in unknown unicast flooding.
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) topology changes trigger a MAC address table flush on affected switches to prevent forwarding loops with the new topology, causing unknown unicast frames to be flooded until new MAC addresses are learned.
An aged MAC table entry by itself causes a single instance of flooding for frames destined to that MAC until it's relearned; it does not cause 'excessive updates' leading to widespread flooding.
Port-security configured globally doesn't directly cause frame flooding; it restricts MAC addresses on a port and triggers violations.
While a forwarding table overflow can lead to unknown unicast flooding, it's typically a symptom of specific attacks or misconfigurations, less common than physical issues or STP changes.
Concept tested: Causes of switch frame flooding (unknown unicast)
Source: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/lan-switching/spanning-tree-protocol/24062-146.html
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