The process of a switch forwarding a frame based on its destination MAC address is called what?

The process of a switch forwarding a frame based on its destination MAC address is referred to as switching. In networking, switches operate at Layer 2 of the OSI model and utilize MAC addresses to intelligently forward frames to the appropriate ports. When a switch receives a data frame, it reads the destination MAC address contained in the frame and then consults its MAC address table, which maps MAC addresses to specific switch ports. If it finds a match, the switch forwards the frame only to the port associated with that MAC address. This efficient method of forwarding reduces unnecessary traffic on the network and ensures that data reaches its intended recipient without being sent to all devices connected to the switch.

The other terms mentioned pertain to different networking concepts: filtering involves controlling which traffic is allowed to pass through a network device based on certain criteria, broadcasting refers to sending a frame to all devices in a network segment, and multicasting involves sending data to a selected group of devices rather than all. Thus, switching specifically describes the targeted process of frame forwarding based on MAC addresses.