MAC-based forwarding (MBF) is designed to avoid which combination of issues?

• A. Layer 3 routing and DNS lookups
• B. TLS handshake delays
• C. Asymmetric packet flows and multiple route lookups
• D. HTTP redirects

Answer: (C)

MAC-based Forwarding focuses on keeping a consistent path for a flow by using the destination MAC to decide how to forward frames, rather than repeatedly relying on Layer 3 routing. This approach avoids two common problems: when traffic between client and server traverses different routes in each direction (asymmetric flows), and the need to perform multiple route lookups for each packet as the path is re-evaluated along the way. By binding the flow to a specific MAC-based path, MBF keeps both directions aligned and reduces the overhead of continuous route lookup, leading to smoother, lower-latency forwarding. TLS handshakes and HTTP redirects aren’t the primary targets of MBF, and DNS lookups aren’t the main issue MBF resolves. The combination MBF targets is the presence of asymmetric packet flows and multiple route lookups.