Hi!
I was just watching the Port Security video for the CCENT course and at approx 38:30, Don clarifies Protect vs Restrict. Unfortunately either I'm not understanding things properly or there's a minor mistake in the video.
In the video, Don says that Protect lets the violation occur, but logs the issue. He also says that Restrict stops the unknown mac address from talking, but allows the known ones to continue.
Other sources of information say that that information is backwards.
(http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1722561)
Protect—This mode permits traffic from known MAC addresses to continue to be forwarded while dropping traffic from unknown MAC addresses when over the allowed MAC address limit. When configured with this mode, no notification action is taken when traffic is dropped.
Restrict—This mode permits traffic from known MAC addresses to continue to be forwarded while dropping traffic from unknown MAC addresses when over the allowed MAC address limit. When configured with this mode, a syslog message is logged, a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) trap is sent, and a violation counter is incremented when traffic is dropped.
Neither mode seems to allow a violation to actually occur. Protect will drop the frame and Restrict will drop the frame and log the issue.