Repeaters and Bridges
A repeater is a gizmo that gives your network signals a boost so that the signals can travel farther. It’s kind of like the Gatorade stations in a marathon. As the signals travel past the repeater, they pick up a cup of Gatorade, take a sip, splash the rest of it on their heads, toss the cup, and hop in a cab when they’re sure that no one is looking. You need a repeater when the total length of a single span of network cable is larger than the maximum allowed for your cable type:
Cable Maximum Length
10Base2 (Coaxial) 185 meters or 606 feet
10/100BaseT (Twisted Pair) 100 meters or 328 feet
Repeaters are used only with Ethernet networks wired with coaxial cable; 10/100BaseT networks don’t use repeaters.
Bridges
A bridge is a device that connects two networks so that they act as if they are one network. Bridges are used to partition one large network into two smaller networks for performance reasons. You can think of a bridge as a kind of smart repeater. Repeaters listen to signals coming down one network cable, amplify them, and send them down the other cable. They do this blindly, paying no attention to the content of the messages that they repeat. In contrast, a bridge is a little smarter about the messages that come down the pike. For starters, most bridges have the capability to listen to the network and automatically figure out the address of each computer on both sides of the bridge. Then the bridge can inspect each message that comes from one side of the bridge and broadcast it on the other side of the bridge, but only if the message is intended for a computer that’s on the other side. This key feature enables bridges to partition a large network into two smaller, more efficient networks. Bridges work best in networks that are highly segregated.
A bridge can partition the Sneetchnet into two networks: the Star-Bellied network and the Plain-Bellied network. The bridge automatically learns which computers are on the Star-Bellied network and which are on the Plain-Bellied network. The bridge forwards messages from the Star-Bellied side to the Plain-Bellied side (and vice versa) only when necessary. The overall performance of both networks improves, although the performance of any network operation that has to travel over the bridge slows down a bit.
A repeater is a gizmo that gives your network signals a boost so that the signals can travel farther. It’s kind of like the Gatorade stations in a marathon. As the signals travel past the repeater, they pick up a cup of Gatorade, take a sip, splash the rest of it on their heads, toss the cup, and hop in a cab when they’re sure that no one is looking. You need a repeater when the total length of a single span of network cable is larger than the maximum allowed for your cable type:
Cable Maximum Length
10Base2 (Coaxial) 185 meters or 606 feet
10/100BaseT (Twisted Pair) 100 meters or 328 feet
Repeaters are used only with Ethernet networks wired with coaxial cable; 10/100BaseT networks don’t use repeaters.
Bridges
A bridge is a device that connects two networks so that they act as if they are one network. Bridges are used to partition one large network into two smaller networks for performance reasons. You can think of a bridge as a kind of smart repeater. Repeaters listen to signals coming down one network cable, amplify them, and send them down the other cable. They do this blindly, paying no attention to the content of the messages that they repeat. In contrast, a bridge is a little smarter about the messages that come down the pike. For starters, most bridges have the capability to listen to the network and automatically figure out the address of each computer on both sides of the bridge. Then the bridge can inspect each message that comes from one side of the bridge and broadcast it on the other side of the bridge, but only if the message is intended for a computer that’s on the other side. This key feature enables bridges to partition a large network into two smaller, more efficient networks. Bridges work best in networks that are highly segregated.
A bridge can partition the Sneetchnet into two networks: the Star-Bellied network and the Plain-Bellied network. The bridge automatically learns which computers are on the Star-Bellied network and which are on the Plain-Bellied network. The bridge forwards messages from the Star-Bellied side to the Plain-Bellied side (and vice versa) only when necessary. The overall performance of both networks improves, although the performance of any network operation that has to travel over the bridge slows down a bit.
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