What is the term for the memory table used by a switch to determine destination ports for frames?

• A. Administrative controls
• B. Physical control
• C. CAM
• D. Detective controls

Answer: (C)

The memory table used by a switch to determine destination ports for frames is the CAM table, which stands for Content Addressable Memory. The switch builds this table by watching the source MAC address on each incoming frame and recording which port that MAC is reachable through. When a frame arrives, the switch looks up the destination MAC in the CAM table to pick the correct outgoing port and forward it there. If the destination isn’t yet in the table, the switch floods the frame to all ports in the same VLAN except the one it came from. CAM is fast because it searches by content in hardware, allowing parallel matching, which is why switches rely on this table for efficient forwarding. This memory is also commonly called the MAC address table, but its underlying mechanism is CAM.