dear Network experts,

What is the use of ethernet bridging (using brctl utils)?

Any url reference or explanation would be appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

it makes two or more ports effecively work as a switch. a bridge (old hardware no longer made) was basically a two port switch for joining sepeate parts of a network where a hub was undesirable.

To add to #2
A Hub works in broadcast mode and cannot differenciate between LAN A & LAN B even if it is connecting them.
A Bridge on the other hand will restrict the traffic of LAN A to LAN A ( and LAN B to LAN B ) and let only the traffic directed from LAN A to LAN B and vice versa to pass through it

dear acid_kewpie and sn68,

I know about bridge and router hardware. But it was not on my mind that this bridging is similar to bridge hardware appliance.

Actually my intention is to build a very simple router ( on my question http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=536788 ). As there is a suggestion by using bridge, I built the brctl util fresh from the source.

I just want some confirmation, could it be done to build a router just by using a bridge ? As far as I know, a bridge does not know to forward the packets as described by the routing tables. On that questions of mine, the response is suggesting and he/she does not know how to utilize the bridging feature.

Thank you for opening my mind.

bridgind / switching is *NOT* routing. it's really clear actually... bridging / switching is done at OSI layer 2, whilst routing is a layer 3 function (routing is often called layer 3 switching). looking at that other thread, you're a bit vague about what you want, but my immediate thoughts aren't of a bridge at all. quagga may well be fine, but it depends what functioality you do wish to get. if you just don't eabled ipasq, then it will do what you've asked for without anything else.

dear Chris,

Thank you for the explanation.