What occurs when a switch is overwhelmed by the continuous stream of traffic due to devices rebroadcasting?

• A. Collision
• B. Fragmentation
• C. Multiple Frame Copies
• D. Broadcast Storm

Answer: (D)

A broadcast storm occurs when the network is flooded with broadcast traffic that keeps circulating because devices keep rebroadcasting and a switch forwards those frames to all ports in the VLAN. Normally a switch sends broadcast frames out every port, and if there are loops or misconfigurations (like redundant links not protected by a loop-prevention protocol), those frames can be received, forwarded, and rebroadcast repeatedly. This creates an exponential surge in traffic, consumes bandwidth and switch CPU resources, and leads to widespread delays or outages. This is different from a collision (which happens on shared media when two devices transmit at the same time) or fragmentation (which deals with breaking up large frames). The phenomenon described is best identified as a broadcast storm.