| A | B |
|---|
| Autonegotiation | IEEE mechanism in which two nodes can exchange messages for the purpose of choosing to use the same Ethernet standards on both ends of the link. |
| Broadcast domain | Set of all devices that receive broadcast frames originating from any device within the set |
| Broadcast frame | Ethernet frame sent to destination address FFFF.FFFF.FFFF, meaning that the frame should be delivered to all hosts on that LAN |
| Collision domain | set of Network Interface Cards for which a frame sent by one NIC could result in a collision with a frame sent by any other NIC in the same network |
| Cut-through switching | When the frame is forwarded as soon as enough of the Ethernet header has been received for the switch to make a forwarding decision,including forwarding the first bits of the frame before the whole frame is received. |
| Flooding | the result of the LAN switch forwarding process for broadcasts and unknown unicast frames. |
| Fragment-free switching | One of three internal processing options on some Cisco LAN switches in which the first bits of the frame can be forwarded before the whole frame is received, but not until the first 64 bytes of the frame are received |
| Spanning Tree Protocol | a protocol that allows a switch to dynamically work around loops in a network topology |
| Store-and-forward switching | One of three internal processing options on some Cisco LAN switches in which the Ethernet frame must be completely received before the switch can begin sending the first bit of the frame. |
| Unknown unicast frame | an Ethernet frame whose destination MAC address us not listed in a switch's MAC address table so the switch must flood the frame. |
| Virtual LAN | A group of devices connected to one or more switches, with the devices grouped into a single broadcast domain through switch configuration. |
