So I know that basically switches work like this (assuming 2 PCs are connected via Ethernet port) – the switch will store the mapping of the 2 PCs' MAC address and the switch ports in which they connected to.
So my question is, if the switch had PC A on one port, and a WIFI router on the other port (and the WIFI router having many wireless devices connected to it), like will all the MAC addresses of the wireless devices be stored on the switch or will only the MAC address of the WIFI router be stored ???
I need your help…
Best Answer
It works the same way as if two switches were connected (switches and WAPs are bridges). The MAC address table of each bridge (switch or WAP) will contain the MAC addresses of the hosts from which the frames originated on the interfaces where the frames entered the bridge. For a bridge-to-bridge connection, the MAC address table will probably have multiple MAC address entries with that interface.
More directly to your question, if frames from a Wi-Fi connected device enter the switch from the switch interface to the WAP, then the switch will have an entry in its MAC address table for the device with the interface connected to the WAP, but, as Cown points out, if the WAP is controller-based using a CAPWAP tunnel, then the frames from the Wi-Fi connected devices would be encapsulated inside CAPWAP frames, and the switch would never see the frames from the Wi-Fi connected devices.
Basically, the answer depends on how your network is configured.