ADDRESS LEARNING TECHNIQUE IN A DATA COMMUNICATION NETWORK

摘要

An address learning technique in a data communication network (100). A packet (300) may be received by the network system when the ingress equipment does not yet have information to look up the appropriate path for the packet based upon its destination media access control address. The packet (300) may then be broadcast or multicast to all possible or probable destinations for the packet. Each such destination adds an entry to its look up table (612) using the source MAC address and an identification of the path by which it received the packet.