CHAPT ER 3

Bridging Basics
Background
Bridges became commercially available in the early 1980s. At the time of their introduction, bridges
connected and enabled packet forwarding between homogeneous networks. More recently, bridging
between different networks has also been defined and standardized.
Several kinds of bridging have emerged as important. Transparent bridging is found primarily in
Ethernet environments. Source-route bridging is found primarily in Token Ring environments.
Translational bridging provides translation between the formats and transit principles of different
media types (usually Ethernet and Token Ring). Source-route transparent bridging combines the
algorithms of transparent bridging and source-route bridging to allow communication in mixed
Ethernet/Token Ring environments.
The diminishing price and the recent inclusion of bridging capability in many routers has taken
substantial market share away from pure bridges. Those bridges that have survived include features
such as sophisticated filtering, pseudo-intelligent path selection, and high throughput rates. Although
an intense debate about the benefits of bridging versus routing raged in the late 1980s, most people
now agree that each has its place and that both are often necessary in any comprehensive
internetworking scheme.

Internetworking Device Comparison

Internetworking devices offer communication between local area network (LAN) segments. There
are four primary types of internetworking devices: repeaters, bridges, routers, and gateways. These
devices can be differentiated very generally by the Open System Interconnection (OSI) layer at which
they establish the LAN-to-LAN connection. Repeaters connect LANs at OSI Layer 1; bridges
connect LANs at Layer 2; routers connect LANs at Layer 3; and gateways connect LANs at
Layers 4 through 7. Each device offers the functionality found at its layer(s) of connection and uses
the functionality of all lower layers. This idea is portrayed graphically in Figure 3-1.

Bridging Basics 3-1

Technology Basics

Figure 3-1 Internetworking Product Functionality

End node End node End node End node

Bridge
Repeater

End node End node End node Gateway End node

Router

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Technology Basics
Bridging occurs at the link layer, which controls data flow, handles transmission errors, provides
physical (as opposed to logical) addressing, and manages access to the physical medium. Bridges
provide these functions by using various link-layer protocols that dictate specific flow control, error
handling, addressing, and media-access algorithms. Examples of popular link-layer protocols
include Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI.
Bridges are not complicated devices. They analyze incoming frames, make forwarding decisions
based on information contained in the frames, and forward the frames toward the destination. In
some cases (for example, source-route bridging), the entire path to the destination is contained in
each frame. In other cases (for example, transparent bridging), frames are forwarded one hop at a
time toward the destination. For more information on source-route bridging and transparent
bridging, see Chapter 30, “Source-Route Bridging,” and Chapter 29, “Transparent Bridging.”
Upper-layer protocol transparency is a primary advantage of bridging. Because bridges operate at
the link layer, they are not required to examine upper-layer information. This means that they can
rapidly forward traffic representing any network-layer protocol. It is not uncommon for a bridge to
move AppleTalk, DECnet, TCP/IP, XNS, and other traffic between two or more networks.
Bridges are capable of filtering frames based on any Layer 2 fields. For example, a bridge can be
programmed to reject (not forward) all frames sourced from a particular network. Since link-layer
information often includes a reference to an upper-layer protocol, bridges can usually filter on this
parameter. Further, filters can be helpful in dealing with unnecessary broadcast and multicast
packets.

3-2 Internetworking Technology Overview

 Types of Bridges

By dividing large networks into self-contained units, bridges provide several advantages. First,
because only some percentage of traffic is forwarded, the bridge diminishes the traffic experienced
by devices on all connected segments. Second, the bridge acts as a firewall for some potentially
damaging network errors. Third, bridges allow for communication between a larger number of
devices than would be supported on any single LAN connected to the bridge. Fourth, bridges extend
the effective length of a LAN, permitting attachment of distant stations that were not previously
connected.

Types of Bridges
Bridges can be grouped into categories based on various product characteristics. Using one popular
classification scheme, bridges are either local or remote. Local bridges provide a direct connection
between multiple LAN segments in the same area. Remote bridges connect multiple LAN segments
in different areas, usually over telecommunications lines. These two configurations are shown in
Figure 3-2.

Figure 3-2 Local and Remote Bridging

Ethernet Local
Bridge bridging

Token Remote
Bridge Bridge
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Ring bridging

Remote bridging presents several unique internetworking challenges. One of these is the difference
between LAN and wide area network (WAN) speeds. Although several fast WAN technologies are
now establishing a presence in geographically dispersed internetworks, LAN speeds are often an
order of magnitude faster than WAN speeds. Vastly different LAN and WAN speeds sometimes
prevent users from running delay-sensitive LAN applications over the WAN.
Remote bridges cannot improve WAN speeds, but can compensate for speed discrepancies through
sufficient buffering capability. If a LAN device capable of a 3-Mbps transmission rate wishes to
communicate with a device on a remote LAN, the local bridge must regulate the 3-Mbps data stream
so that it does not overwhelm the 64-kbps serial link. This is done by storing the incoming data in
on-board buffers and sending it over the serial link at a rate the serial link can accommodate. This
can be achieved only for short bursts of data that do not overwhelm the bridge’s buffering capability.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) has divided the OSI link layer into two
separate sublayers: the Media Access Control (MAC) sublayer and the Logical Link Control (LLC)
sublayer. The MAC sublayer permits and orchestrates media access (for example, contention, token
passing, or others), while the LLC sublayer is concerned with framing, flow control, error control,
and MAC-sublayer addressing.
Some bridges are MAC-layer bridges. These devices bridge between homogeneous networks (for
example, IEEE 802.3 and IEEE 802.3). Other bridges can translate between different link-layer
protocols (for example, IEEE 802.3 and IEEE 802.5). The basic mechanics of such a translation are
shown in Figure 3-3.

Bridging Basics 3-3

Types of Bridges

Figure 3-3 IEEE 802.3/IEEE 802.5 Bridging

Host A Host B

Application Application

Presentation Presentation

Session Session

Transport Transport

Network Network
Bridge

LLC PKT
Link Link Link
MAC 802.3 PKT 802.5 PKT

Physical 802.3 PKT 802.5 PKT Physical Physical

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802.3 medium 802.5 medium

In the figure, the IEEE 802.3 host (Host A) formulates a packet containing application information
and encapsulates the packet in an IEEE 802.3-compatible frame for transit over the IEEE 802.3
medium to the bridge. At the bridge, the frame is stripped of its IEEE 802.3 header at the MAC
sublayer of the link layer and is subsequently passed up to the LLC sublayer for further processing.
After this processing, the packet is passed back down to an IEEE 802.5 implementation, which
encapsulates the packet in an IEEE 802.5 header for transmission on the IEEE 802.5 network to the
IEEE 802.5 host (Host B).
A bridge’s translation between networks of different types is never perfect because it is likely that
one network will support certain frame fields and protocol functions not supported by the other
network. Many bridging translation issues are discussed in more detail in Chapter 31, “Mixed-Media
Bridging.”

3-4 Internetworking Technology Overview