Sunday, August 7, 2011

Bridge Layer 2

Layer 2 bridging is definitely an implementation of IEEE 802.1D transparent bridging that's been utilized in bridges and Layer 2 switches for several years.

An L2 bridge inspections the destination media access control (MAC) address of every incoming frame. When the MAC address is designated towards the bridge computer, the frame is processed because of it because the destination. When the MAC address isn't designated towards the bridge computer, the Network Bridge notes the origin address from the frame and also the port which the frame was received and only produces or refreshes an entry inside a bridge Layer 2 table. The main harbor is really a number that identifies the network adapter and it is corresponding LAN segment. Each entry within the Layer 2 bridge table includes a MAC address, the main harbor number akin to the LAN segment which a frame in the MAC address was received, along with a timeout value. Records within the Layer 2 bridge table persist for five minutes before being removed.


Since the Layer 2 bridge table is made based on the origin MAC address of incoming frames, it never consists of records for broadcast or multicast MAC addresses.

Whenever a valid frame not destined for that bridge is received, the bridge computer looks in the destination MAC address within the Layer 2 bridge table and takes among the following actions:

When the destination address is located and it is on a single port that the frame was received, the frame is quietly thrown away. This operation is called blocking. The bridge computer pre-vents intra-segment frames from being submitted past the LAN segment which it came from.

When the destination address is located and it is on the different port that the frame was received, the frame is submitted out with the port that corresponds towards the destination’s LAN segment. This operation is called selective sending. The transparent bridge smartly forwards inter-segment frames having a known destination MAC address. The blocking and selective sending procedures of transparent bridges are utilized in large systems to segment network traffic.

When the destination address isn't found, the frame is submitted out through all the ports except the main one which the frame was received. This operation is called flooding. To keep LAN segment connection transparency, the bridge computer blindly forwards frames by having an unknown destination MAC address. All broadcast and multicast MAC visitors are flooded because you will find never any broadcast or multicast records within the Layer 2 bridge table.

The flooding operation of transparent bridges, while helpful for maintaining the transparency from the connection LAN segments, produces sending storms for frames by having an unknown destination address whenever bridges which have sending enabled on all ports are connected inside a loop.

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