Remote Bridges

By definition, a "local" area network was intended to be a network facility covering a limited space, such as a set of offices, a building, or perhaps a campus. But as earlier discussion has shown, the evolution of LANs has been fueled by the desire of users to bend the rules to suit their special needs.

Remote bridges were designed to unite LANs located at different sites into a single LAN. Remote bridges have been used for several reasons. Some protocol traffic cannot be routed, so if local clients needed to cross a wide area link to reach a remote server, bridging was the only alternative. Frequently used nonroutable protocols have included IBM SNA, Digital Equipment Corporation Local Area Transport (LAT), and IBM/Microsoft ...

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