2 Cisco Switches Connected by a Wireless Bridge

[Randy Calderon]

Hello Experts,

I have a site that has two Cisco switches that are more than 300 feet apart. They are connected wirelessly using a bridge (802.11n). However, my issue is that the MAC Address Table on each switch does not have the information the other has. The MAC addresses on Switch A's MAC address table is not on Switch B's MAC address table, and vice-versa. Is there a way to get the two tables to update each other? I notice that this is not a problem when two Cisco switches are connected by wire on ports configured as a trunk. The difference on this site is that the switches are connected wirelessly. I can verify that the switches are able to communicate to each other because both can send/receive pings.

Is there some protocol or Cisco feature that will enable these two switches to update each other's MAC address table to reflect devices that are currently connected?

Thank you very much,

Randy C.

[Philip D'Ath · Accepted solution]

It is normal for the switch MAC tables to be different.  They each built their own MAC table based on what they see (aka learn).

You need very expensive switches to have synchronised MAC tables (such as the Nexus OTV feature).

[Randy Calderon]

Thank you Philip.