Layer 2 Address Learning and Forwarding Overview
SUMMARY
Understanding Layer 2 Learning and Forwarding
On MX Series routers only, you can configure Layer 2 MAC address and VLAN learning and forwarding properties in support of Layer 2 bridging. The router learns unicast media access control (MAC) addresses to avoid flooding the packets to all the ports in a bridge domain. The MX Series router creates a source MAC entry in its source and destination MAC tables for each MAC address learned from packets received on ports that belong to the bridge domain. If the bridge domain receives a control protocol data unit (PDU) which does not have a corresponding protocol configured, then the control PDU is considered as an unknown multicast data packet and the packets are flooded across all the ports that are part of the same bridge domain. If the bridge domain has the protocol corresponding to the PDU configured , then the control PDU is considered as a control packet and is processed by the routing engine.
By default, Layer 2 address learning is enabled. You can disable MAC learning for the router or for a specific bridge domain or logical interfaces. You can also configure the following Layer 2 forwarding properties for an MX Series router:
Timeout interval for MAC entries
MAC accounting
A limit to the number of MAC addresses learned from the logical interfaces
Understanding Layer 2 Learning and Forwarding for Bridge Domains
When you configure a bridge domain, Layer 2 address learning is enabled by default. The bridge domain learns unicast media access control (MAC) addresses to avoid flooding the packets to all the ports in the bridge domain. Each bridge domain creates a source MAC entry in its source and destination MAC tables for each source MAC address learned from packets received on the ports that belong to the bridge domain.
Traffic is not flooded back onto the interface on which
it was received. However, because this “split horizon”
occurs at a late stage, the packet statistics displayed by commands
such as show interfaces queue will include flood traffic.
You can optionally disable MAC learning either for the entire router or for a specific bridge domain or logical interface. You can also configure the following Layer 2 learning and forwarding properties:
Static MAC entries for logical interfaces only
Limit to the number of MAC addresses learned from a specific logical interface or from all the logical interfaces in a bridge domain
Size of the MAC address table for the bridge domain
MAC accounting for a bridge domain