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.