Overview of Bridged Networks

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Bridges connect various nodes in the network into a single network. The network segments share a single broadcast network and communicate as if they were a single network segment when connected. As a result, each node can reach the other nodes by using network protocols such as IP rather than using routers to forward traffic across network segments. If you do not use a bridge, you must configure IP routing to permit the forwarding of IP traffic between nodes.

Although you can use both bridging and routing to distribute information about the locations of resources on the network, they differ in several ways. Routing is implemented at the IP layer (L3) and uses routing protocols. No routing protocols are used on the datalink layer.

Bridging is used to distribute information about the locations of resources on the network. In a bridged network, the destinations of forwarded packets are determined by examining the network traffic that is received on the links that are attached to the bridge. A bridged network uses protocols, such as Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL). For more information, see Bridging Protocols.

Caution - Do not set the local-mac-address? property to false by using the eeprom command on SPARC^® based systems that use bridging. Doing so causes these systems to incorrectly use the same MAC address on multiple ports and on the same network.