How does a switch learn MAC Addresses

Hi Rosna,

Any device that has an IP address needs ARP. After all, if it wants to send an IP packet with a destination IP address, it has to figure out what the layer two MAC address is.

On a layer two switch, you still might want to configure an IP address. Here are some reasons:

- To manage it remotely through telnet or SSH.
- So it can send syslog messages to an external server.
- So you can use SNMP to monitor the switch.

It is possible that a switch is the initiator of the ARP process. For example, perhaps you just rebooted it and it wants to send syslog information to some syslog server…in that case, it will send an ARP request for the syslog server that you have configured on the switch.

Hope this helps!

Rene

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