Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 20:52:39 -0600 From: "J. Seth Henry" <jshenry@net-noise.com> To: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: questions-digest V5 #23 Message-ID: <001201c08030$8e3c5cc0$0e01a8c0@guinevere> References: <bulk.67495.20010116175730@hub.freebsd.org>
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This is correct, but a bridge was originally used for connecting different kinds of networks together into one network. For example, let's say you have a 10base-T network (standard ethernet) and a 10base-2 (thinnet coax) network. This happened a lot when companies were upgrading their networks. You want to connect these two together seamlessly - so you use a bridge. In homogenous networks, strict bridges are less useful, though they can serve to break up a collision domain. If you have ever seen a two port switch, then you get the idea. It allows you to fudge on the repeater rule, and can help if you have a busy hub on your network that you would like to isolate. It also allows you to connect different speed network segments today. Early 100BaseTx networks were incompatible with 10BaseTX network - and required a bridge just as the old thinnet <-> ethernet networks did. Of course, this is no longer much of a problem with 10/100 equipment. Seth Henry jshenry@net-noise.com Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 11:59:50 -0800 From: David Greenman <dg@root.com> Subject: Re: A really easy one for you networking guru's >What is a bridge. > >I've seen a lot of posts recently about bridging-firewalls, or even a simple >network bridge. > >What is a network bridge, and how is it different from a 'leave node' that >can forward packets between interfaces. A bridge is a device that forwards packets between two LANs at the layer-2 (MAC address) level. An ethernet switch is essentially a bridge that does this with more than just two physical LANs. One of the characterists of a bridge is that there is no routing protocol involved - the bridge learns the topology by watching the traffic going over the two LANs and only forwards packets that it needs to (i.e. those that aren't on the same physical LAN). - -DG David Greenman Co-founder, The FreeBSD Project - http://www.freebsd.org President, TeraSolutions, Inc. - http://www.terasolutions.com Pave the road of life with opportunities. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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