Overview
A bridge is a store-and-forward device connecting and transferring traffic between LAN segments at the data-link layer. In some small-sized networks, especially those with a dispersed distribution of users, bridges can reduce the network maintenance costs without requiring the end users to perform special configurations on the devices.
Major bridging technologies include transparent bridging, source-route bridging (SRB), translational bridging, and source-route translational bridging (SR/TLB). HPE devices support only transparent bridging.
Transparent bridging bridges LAN segments of the same physical media type, primarily in Ethernet environments. A transparent bridging device keeps a bridge table, which contains mappings between destination MAC addresses and outbound interfaces.
Transparent bridging on a device provides the following features:
Bridging over Ethernet
Bridging over PPP and HDLC links
Bridging over X.25 links
Bridging over FR links
VLAN transparency
Support for both routing and bridging