From owner-freebsd-isp Wed Mar 24 14:25: 1 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from mercury.webnology.com (mercury.webnology.com [209.155.51.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3C47F14DFA for ; Wed, 24 Mar 1999 14:24:59 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jooji@webnology.com) Received: from localhost (jooji@localhost) by mercury.webnology.com (8.9.2/8.9.2) with SMTP id QAA13119; Wed, 24 Mar 1999 16:25:05 -0600 (CST) Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 16:25:05 -0600 (CST) From: "Jasper O'Malley" To: Renaud Waldura Cc: "'Peter Brezny'" , freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: switch vs bridge In-Reply-To: <9141909996F1D011B8FF00A0C95A661B2E09CE@server.ligos.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Renaud Waldura wrote: > No, because a brige shares the links between all ports, forwards the > datagrams to all ports. This is incorrect. You're thinking of a hub. It breaks down like this: Simple repeater - has two ports. Anything it hears on one port it copies and blindly transmits ("repeats") on the other port. Does not check for or retransmit in the case of a collision. Hub - a multiport repeater. Anything it hears on any port is copied and blindly retransmitted on all other ports. All devices connected to a hub must operate in half-duplex mode (i.e. they can't talk and listen at the same time). Simple Bridge - has two ports. Maintains an internal table of MAC addresses, keeping track of which devices are connected to which port. Only transmits packets if it needs to transfer them from the segment on one side to the segment on the other. Usually used to connect hubs and separate networks into different "collision domains." DOES check for collisions, and will retransmit. Switch - a multiport bridge. Maintains an internal table of MAC addresses, keeping track of which devices are connected to which ports. Devices directly connected to a switch can operate in full-duplex mode. Cheers, Mick The Reverend Jasper P. O'Malley dotdot:jooji@webnology.com Systems Administrator ringring:asktheadmiral Webnology, LLC woowoo:http://www.webnology.com/~jooji To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message