What is a CAM flood and what effect does it have on a switch?

What is a CAM flood and what effect does it have on a switch?

• A. Causes switch to act like a hub, sending all frames to all switch ports
• B. Increases security by isolating frames
• C. Reduces broadcast traffic
• D. Stores frames in CAM table

Answer: (A)

CAM flood happens when the switch has no known destination for a frame in its CAM table. With no entry to map the destination MAC to a specific port, the switch broadcasts the frame out all ports except the one it came from. This makes the switch behave like a hub for that frame—every device on the network segment sees it. That’s why the traffic increases on all links and why frames can be exposed to devices that shouldn’t see them, reducing efficiency and security. It’s not about storing frames in the CAM table; the CAM table is just a mapping of learned addresses, and flooding occurs because there’s no destination entry yet. Once the destination is learned, normal switching resumes, and traffic is directed to the single appropriate port.

CAM flood happens when the switch has no known destination for a frame in its CAM table. With no entry to map the destination MAC to a specific port, the switch broadcasts the frame out all ports except the one it came from. This makes the switch behave like a hub for that frame—every device on the network segment sees it. That’s why the traffic increases on all links and why frames can be exposed to devices that shouldn’t see them, reducing efficiency and security. It’s not about storing frames in the CAM table; the CAM table is just a mapping of learned addresses, and flooding occurs because there’s no destination entry yet. Once the destination is learned, normal switching resumes, and traffic is directed to the single appropriate port.