And it's worth mentioning a couple other things too, just to confuse matters. ;-)
Although a switch behaves like a multiport bridge, it is often placed in a topology where a hub used to go. Because a switch has so many ports, people use them to connect individual stations. Bridges were rarely used that way. Bridges connect networks. A switch can forward multiple frames at once, whereas many bridges couldn't. Due to the advanced "switching fabric" (to use another marketing term), a switch can forward a frame from port 1 to port 2 while at the same time forwarding a frame form port 3 to port 4, for example. Switch design is much more complex than bridge design. Bridges (and first generation switches) had a shared bus and very few bells and whistles. Modern switches use technologies such as ASICs shared memory crosspoint (crossbar) architectures star-wired architectures methods to eliminate head of the line blocking virtual output queuing etc. You get the idea. Priscilla At 03:19 PM 5/21/02, John Neiberger wrote: >Marketing! A switch is simply a multiport bridge. Bridges originally >had very few ports, as few as two. When hardware became faster and >manufacturers started adding more ports to their bridges they started >calling them switches to differentiate them from their slower brethren >with fewer ports. > >John > > >>> "rtiwari" 5/21/02 12:57:01 PM >>> >Could somebody will please describe me the difference in >between bridge and switch. >Thanks >Ravi ________________________ Priscilla Oppenheimer http://www.priscilla.com Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=44679&t=44649 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
