Bridging is a forwarding technique making no assumption about where a particular network address is located. It depends on flooding and the examination of source addresses in received packet headers to locate unknown devices. Once a device is located, its location is stored in a table to avoid broadcasting to that device again. Bridging is limited by its dependency on flooding, and is used in local area networks only. A bridge and a controller are very similar, since a controller is a bridge with a number of ports.
To view network bridge information:
Bridge Name | Displays the numeric ID of the network bridge. |
MAC Address | Displays the MAC address of each listed bridge. |
Interface | Displays the controller or service platform physical port interface the bridge uses to transfer packets. Interface availability is slightly different amongst supported controller and service platform models. |
VLAN | Displays the VLAN the bridge is using as a virtual interface within the network. |
Forwarding | Displays whether the bridge is forwarding packets and in a forwarding state. |