Bridges, Routers and Switches

Bridges and routers are devices used for connecting different LANs or LAN segments together. There are several organizations which have LANs at several offices across the world. Routers were originally developed to permits connection of remote LANs across a wide area network (WAN). The Bridges can also be used for this purpose. Through setting up routers or bridges on two various LANs and connecting them both a user on one LAN can access resources on the other LAN as if they were on the local LAN.

Bridges

The Bridges are easier and less expensive than routers. Bridges creates a easy do/don't decision on that packets to send across two segments they connect. The Filtering is done based on the destination address of the packet. It is not forwarded if a packet's destination is a station on the similar segment where it originated. It is connected to a different bridge port and forwarded to that port if it is destined for a station on another LAN.

Routers

Routers are more complex and expensive than the bridges. They use information inside every packet to route it from one LAN to other communicate inside each other and share information which permits them to determine the best route by a complex network of several LANs.

Switches

Switches are another categories of device used to link various LANs and route packets among them. A switch has multiple ports, each of that can support either a single station or a whole Ethernet or Token Ring LAN. Within a different LAN connected to each of the ports, it could switch packets among LANs as required.