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Cisco IE 2000 Switch Software Configuration Guide
OL-25866-01
Chapter 7 Performing Switch Administration
Information About Performing Switch Administration

MAC Address Learning on a VLAN

By default, MAC address learning is enabled on all VLANs on the switch. You can control MAC address
learning on a VLAN to manage the available MAC address table space by controlling which VLANs,
and therefore which ports, can learn MAC addresses. Before you disable MAC address learning, be sure
that you are familiar with the network topology and the switch system configuration. Disabling MAC
address learning on a VLAN could cause flooding in the network.
Follow these guidelines when disabling MAC address learning on a VLAN:
• Use caution before disabling MAC address learning on a VLAN with a configured switch virtual
interface (SVI). The switch then floods all IP packets in the Layer 2 domain.
• You can disable MAC address learning on a single VLAN ID (for example, no mac address-table
learning vlan 223) or on a range of VLAN IDs (for example, no mac address-table learning vlan
1-20, 15).
• We recommend that you disable MAC address learning only in VLANs with two ports. If you
disable MAC address learning on a VLAN with more than two ports, every packet entering the
switch is flooded in that VLAN domain.
• You cannot disable MAC address learning on a VLAN that is used internally by the switch. If the
VLAN ID that you enter is an internal VLAN, the switch generates an error message and rejects the
command. To view internal VLANs in use, enter the show vlan internal usage privileged EXEC
command.
• If you disable MAC address learning on a VLAN configured as a private-VLAN p rimary VLAN,
MAC addresses are still learned on the secondary VLAN that belongs to the private VLAN and are
then replicated on the primary VLAN. If you disable MAC address learning on the secondary
VLAN, but not the primary VLAN of a private VLAN, MAC address learning occurs on the primary
VLAN and is replicated on the secondary VLAN.
• You cannot disable MAC address learning on an RSPAN VLAN. The configuration is not allowed.
• If you disable MAC address learning on a VLAN that includes a secure port, MAC address learni ng
is not disabled on that port. If you disable port security, the configured MAC address learning state
is enabled.
To reenable MAC address learning on a VLAN, use the default mac address-table learning vlan
vlan-id global configuration command. You can also reenable MAC address learning on a VLAN by
entering the mac address-table learning vlan vlan-id global configuration command. The first
(default) command returns to a default condition and therefore does not appear in the output from the
show running-config command. The second command causes the configuration to appear in the show
running-config privileged EXEC command display.
ARP Table Management
To communicate with a device (over Ethernet, for example), the software first must learn the 48-bit MAC
address or the local data link address of that device. The process of learning the local data link address
from an IP address is called address resolution.
The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) associates a host IP address with the corresponding media or
MAC addresses and the VLAN ID. Using an IP address, ARP finds the associated MAC address. When
a MAC address is found, the IP-MAC address association is stored in an ARP cache for rapid retrieval.
Then the IP datagram is encapsulated in a link-layer frame and sent over the network. Encapsulation of