MAC addresses are unique identifiers with two assigned parts—the OUI is assigned by IEEE, and the second 24 bits are assigned by the manufacturer. These addresses are stored in a table called the Content Addressable Memory (CAM). This table has a fixed size. The CAM stores information about MAC addresses after operating, as the following graph illustrates:
In this case, initially, the CAM contains two addresses with their port information. To send traffic from Host A to Host B, information about Host B should be included in the CAM table but this is not the case in this demonstration. Thus Host A sends an ARP request to all hosts. The hosts send back information about their MAC addresses and ports. Now Host A has information about Host B and stores it in the CAM table, as illustrated:
Finally, the CAM table contains all the required information about the hosts...
