A port in the Discarding state in RSTP will discard the received data frames, but it can maintain the MAC address table based on the data frames received by the port.

Question

Options

• ATRUE
• BFALSE

• A
  18% (7)
• B
  83% (33)

Explanation

Option B (FALSE) is correct because a port in the RSTP Discarding state performs neither forwarding nor learning - it completely ignores data frames for the purposes of MAC address table population. MAC address learning is only enabled in the Learning and Forwarding states, where the switch processes source MAC addresses from received frames to build its table.

Option A is wrong because it conflates two separate port behaviors: dropping data frames (which Discarding does) and learning from them (which Discarding does not do). The Discarding state is intentionally passive for all data-plane activity - the port only processes BPDUs to participate in the spanning tree topology, nothing more.

Memory tip: Think of the three active RSTP port states in order - Discarding → Learning → Forwarding - and match them to what grows: in Discarding, nothing grows (no table, no traffic); in Learning, only the MAC table grows; in Forwarding, both the table and traffic flow. If a port can't forward, it can't learn either.

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