THE MAC BRIDGE
Bridges are designed to interconnect LANs. Therefore, they use a destination MAC address (see Appendix B, Figure B-2) in determining how to relay the traffic between LANs. A bridge “pushes” the conventional network layer responsibilities of route discovery and forwarding operations into the data link layer. In effect, a bridge has no conventional network layer.
Figure 4-1 shows a multiport bridge, which accepts a frame coming in on a port from network A. The frame is examined by the MAC relay entity and a decision is made to relay the traffic on an output port to network C.
Figure 4-1. Bridge Operations
There is no provision for ...
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