Which of the following network devices have no filtering capability and simply…

2017

Which of the following network devices have no filtering capability and simply forward the frames they receive?

Answer: C. hub; D. repeaterConcept: "Filtering" means a device looks inside the arriving data for a destination address, compares it against a table it maintains, and then decides…

  1. A.

    router

  2. B.

    bridge

  3. C.

    hub

  4. D.

    repeater

Attempted by 236 students.

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C, D

Concept: "Filtering" means a device looks inside the arriving data for a destination address, compares it against a table it maintains, and then decides selectively whether and where to send that data on. Address awareness begins only at the data link layer (Layer 2) and above. A purely physical-layer (Layer 1) device sees nothing but voltage or light transitions on the wire — no addresses, no table, and therefore no decision to make — so it passes on everything that reaches it.

Application: place each of the four devices at the layer it works on, and ask what address it reads before forwarding.

  • A repeater sits at the physical layer between two cable segments. It amplifies and regenerates the incoming signal so the link can run past the cable’s attenuation limit, and pushes every regenerated bit onto the far segment.

  • A hub is a multiport repeater, also at the physical layer. A signal arriving on one port is repeated out of every other port, so every attached station receives it and all of them share one collision domain.

  • A bridge works at the data link layer. It learns which MAC addresses live on which segment, and when a frame arrives it consults that table: a frame whose destination is already known to be on the sending segment is held back, one known to be on the far segment is passed across, and a broadcast or an as-yet-unlearnt destination is flooded onward.

  • A router works at the network layer. It reads the destination IP address of each packet, looks it up in a routing table, and sends the packet out of the single interface that leads toward that network.

Cross-check: line the four up by layer and by the address each one reads.

Device

Layer

Address read

Selective forwarding

repeater

Layer 1 (physical)

none

no — regenerates every signal onward

hub

Layer 1 (physical)

none

no — repeats to every other port

bridge

Layer 2 (data link)

destination MAC

yes — uses a learnt MAC table

router

Layer 3 (network)

destination IP

yes — uses a routing table

Result: the two physical-layer devices, the hub and the repeater, carry no address table and hand on every frame unchanged, which is exactly the behaviour the question describes. The bridge and the router each examine a destination address and forward selectively, so both of them do filter.

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