Cut-Through Mode

Cut-Through Mode

Switches operating in cut-through mode receive and examine only the first 6 bytes of a frame. These first 6 bytes represent the destination MAC address of the frame, which is sufficient information to make a forwarding decision. Although cut-through switching offers the least latency when transmitting frames, it is susceptible to transmitting fragments created via Ethernet collisions, runts (frames less than 64 bytes), or damaged frames.