conclusion
...art with bridges. Bridges Background As local area networks (LAN’s) grew in size, collisions (in an Ethernet network) and network traffic grew, and at the same time network efficiency became worse. Bridges became commercially available in the early 1980’s and has become a useful tool in segmenting networks, increasing workstations, and improving network efficiency. Also, bridges increase overall reliability, and make the network easier to maintain. Basic Operation Bridges basically make a decision to either forward or don’t forward packets between local area networks connected to it, also known as filtering. A packet has a destination address that the bridge uses to make a decision to forward it to one of its connected ports or not. Page 2 Filtering is done where bridges operate, at the second layer of the OSI model, the Data Link Layer (DLL). The DLL actually consists of two parts, the Media Access Control (MAC) and the Logical Link Control (LLC). Bridges operate at the MAC level. Because bridges operate at the Data Link Layer, they are not required to operate at the higher levels of the OSI model. What this means is that bridges can rapidly forward packets representing any network-layer protocol. It can be TCP/IP, DECnet or other types of traffic. Since bridge...