I remember awhile back I had to "bridge" my hi-speed DSL modem to my router. I've since foregotten what was done.

What is meant by bridging, when should you do it, and what do you do to accomplish the bridging

Hi Rbig

A bridge is a device that connects 2 separate media segments - it is used to reduce traffic because it intelligently deploys traffic between clients.

For example we have the network segment "A" that contains 10 computers/clients and we have network segment "B" that also contains 10 computers - instead of uplinking the 2 hubs used by the segment A and segment B, we can bridge them together using a bridge. Thus, when a computer on segment A sends a packet to a computer on the same segment, the bridge stops the packet reaching segment B because it know its intended for a computer on segment A (reading the MAC address of the receiver)

Another type of bridge, which you probably are familiar with is the bridging between two NICs (network interface cards). This creates a link between the 2. This is used if you want to turn your Windows/Linux workstation into a gateway - you can use one NIC for the Internet and one for your LAN connection. In that configuration, the rest of the LAN gets internet access thru your computer that is now local gateway - you have one NIC handling incoming/outgoing traffic on an external IP address and also communicates with the NIC handling incoming/outgoing traffic on the LAN