Which frame forwarding method involves waiting to receive the entire frame before forwarding and checking for errors?

Which frame forwarding method involves waiting to receive the entire frame before forwarding and checking for errors?

• A. Store-and-Forward
• B. Cut-Through
• C. Fragment-Free
• D. Fast-Forward

Answer: (A)

Store-and-forward is the method that waits to receive the entire frame before forwarding and checks for errors. The switch buffers the whole frame, runs a CRC check, and only forwards if the frame is error-free. This guarantees that bad frames aren’t sent to the destination, at the cost of higher latency due to buffering and processing. In contrast, cut-through starts forwarding as soon as it has enough information (usually the destination MAC address), minimizing latency but skipping the full-frame CRC check. Fragment-free is a compromise that forwards after the first 64 bytes to avoid sending obviously corrupted fragments, and fast-forward is an even quicker variant of cut-through that also starts forwarding early.

Store-and-forward is the method that waits to receive the entire frame before forwarding and checks for errors. The switch buffers the whole frame, runs a CRC check, and only forwards if the frame is error-free. This guarantees that bad frames aren’t sent to the destination, at the cost of higher latency due to buffering and processing.

In contrast, cut-through starts forwarding as soon as it has enough information (usually the destination MAC address), minimizing latency but skipping the full-frame CRC check. Fragment-free is a compromise that forwards after the first 64 bytes to avoid sending obviously corrupted fragments, and fast-forward is an even quicker variant of cut-through that also starts forwarding early.