From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jan 16 12: 8: 9 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from implode.root.com (root.com [209.102.106.178]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 545BF37B404 for ; Tue, 16 Jan 2001 12:07:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from implode.root.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by implode.root.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA17383; Tue, 16 Jan 2001 11:59:50 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200101161959.LAA17383@implode.root.com> To: peter@sysadmin-inc.com Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: A really easy one for you networking guru's In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 16 Jan 2001 14:19:32 PST." <000301c0800a$6757a7c0$46010a0a@sysadmininc.com> From: David Greenman Reply-To: dg@root.com Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 11:59:50 -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG >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