From owner-freebsd-net Wed Mar 24 12:52:41 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from silver.sms.fi (silver.sms.fi [194.111.122.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 8111E14F75 for ; Wed, 24 Mar 1999 12:52:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from pete@sms.fi) Received: from sms.fi (localhost.sms.fi [127.0.0.1]) by silver.sms.fi (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id WAA17531; Wed, 24 Mar 1999 22:51:49 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from pete@sms.fi) Message-ID: <36F95064.670D0DA1@sms.fi> Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 22:51:48 +0200 From: Petri Helenius X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 3.1-STABLE i386) X-Accept-Language: en,fi MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Bill Fumerola Cc: Peter Brezny , freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: switch vs bridge (fwd) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Bill Fumerola wrote: > > On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Petri Helenius wrote: > > > > A switch replicates packets based on their Ethernet destination. > > > > > And how exactly would you describe a bridge then? > > Anything I say is going to be able to be picked apart, > > but a bridge replicates any data it sees for its destination network and > just shoves it over. > > A switch makes an intelligent port-by-port decision. > 99% of ethernet bridges out there have a forwarding table as the switches have which are multiport bridges. It's a completely different ballgame for token ring though. There is no concept of "network" in ethernet so you cannot do any actions based on the addressing other than learn where all the sources are. This process is equally the same for bridges and switches. (since they are the same) Pete To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message