The frames on the switch go round and round, round and round and round and round

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Why is the switch talking to itself? Is it stupid??

Switches are kind of stupid from a hardware perspective. A basic switch just has a lookup table that has all the connected devices and if it can't find the destination address in the switch sends it out on all ports. There are protocols to handle this but they add overhead and are only available on higher end devices.

You can imagine what kind of chaos this could cause

No need to imagine, I've done it myself!

I'm still puzzled though. Is switch initiative the ARP request? I though that since nothing (that can communicate) is connected to it except itself, it would be just quiet.

You just connect your laptop and run a broadcast ping

Problem solved

I see, so that's how you bootstrapped it?