You’re a network administer and you issue the command (show port 3/1) on an Ethernet
port. To your surprise you notice a non-zero entry in the ‘Giants’ column. What could be the
cause of this?

A.
IEEE 802.1Q

B.
IEEE 802.10

C.
Misconfigured NIC

D.
User configuration

E.
All of the above

Explanation:
The 802.1Q standard can create an interesting scenario on the network. Recalling that the
maximum size for an Ethernet frame as specified by IEEE 802.3 is 1518 bytes, this means
that if a maximum-sized Ethernet frame gets tagged, the frame size will be 1522 bytes, a
number that violates the IEEE 802.3 standard. To resolve this issue, the 802.3 committee
created a subgroup called 802.3ac to extend the maximum Ethernet size to 1522 bytes.
Note: The show port command is used to display port status and counters. Giants denote
the number of received giant frames (frames that exceed the maximum IEEE 802.3 frame
size) on the port.
Reference: Trunking between Catalyst 4000, 5000, and 6000 Family Switches Using 802.1q
Encapsulation
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/473/27.html