I was arguing with some folks regarding the fact that the switch is the one that stores mac addresses and they are telling me no, it's the computer that stores the mac addresses... anyone can respond to this?

Switches do store ARP tables. (with mac addresses of known neighbours - required to switch frames)
Computer has mac address, but afaik it doesn't store other mac addresses.
Edit: after searching i Google, red hat and windows server documentation both mention command for reading arp cache, so i'd assume that computers also store mac addresses.

@impune-pl for the arp table on ethernet level. But with switches it has only mac adresses of the local network.

@stop can you please rephrase the whole idea?

Please...

We're talking about protocols here.

ARP is a protocol. Ethernet is a protocol.

Both standardized.

Doesn't matter which device, if they want to interoperate, they'll have to use the same protocols.

A switch can be OSI layer 2 and thus only use Ethernet / ARP, but it's not uncommon that they can do OSI layer 3 with IP.

@IntrusionCM an switch nust be able to be on osi 3. Otherwise it would be an hub.

@stop Hub is OSI Layer 1 only.

Switch, MAC based (no VLAN / IP) is OSI Layer 2.

Switch, IP / VLAN capable is OSI Layer 3.