In-depth analysis of the comprehensive comparison between routers and bridges

Routers and bridges are still commonly used. So I have studied the comprehensive comparison between routers and bridges. Here I will share with you, hoping to help you. In typical cases, routers are used to connect geographically dispersed networks, making it possible to connect a large number of computers together.

Before routers and bridges become popular, bridges are usually used for the same purpose. The bridge network is outstanding in small-scale networks, but problems have emerged in the big environment. The bridge must remember all the independent computers on the network. The problem with connecting a large number of computers with a bridge is that the bridge cannot understand the network number, so the broadcast generated anywhere on the network will be sent to every place on the Internet. Figure 1-5 shows the differences between the router and the bridge processing broadcast.

If a PC sends a broadcast packet to net l, the broadcast packet will not be further transmitted over the interconnected network. Many PC network systems use the Broadcast Function extensively, which consumes a large amount of available bandwidth in the bridge network. For this, we will compare the routing decisions between routers in the Interconnect Network and typical workstations or hosts. Typical workstations such as p c machines running popular t c p/I p protocol stacks can work on t c p/I P networks, manual configuration is required. At least one I P address, one subnet mask, and one default gateway must be configured.

On the workstation, it is very easy to configure routing decisions in this way. If the workstation sends a packet group packet to another computer on the same network, the packet group is directly sent to the target computer. If the destination computer is located on a different network, the packet group is forwarded to the default gateway for routing and finally to the destination.

The best way to route packet groups is to remember the network topology that frequently changes due to devices or other faults. To complete these tasks, Each router and bridge maintains a route table routing table). This table lists all known network numbers and the methods to reach these networks. Routers and bridges also use the routing protocol to make the route table consistent with the ever-changing interconnection network.