Archived from groups: alt.internet.wireless (
More info?)
On 22 Sep 2004 09:53:31 -0700, carhore@yahoo.com (c hore) wrote:
>...in that it has an internal MAC table and transmits wirelessly
>only those packets whose destination MAC addresses are on the
>other side of the wireless link?
You're mixing up two technologies and acronyms.
A bridge is a two port switch. A switch is a bridge with more than
two ports. A wireless bridge acts like a two port switch, where it
builds a MAC address to port table and only passes packets that go to
the other ports.
>Or is it more like an Ethernet hub, transmitting wirelessly all
>packets that it sees on its LAN port?
A hub is officially known as an ethernet "repeater". Such a best
would be terribly inefficient when used with wireless. Methinks there
may be some confusion as to the use of the word "repeater". There's
no way to run a wireless repeater as a "hub" because there's no way to
simultaneously transmit unicast packets to everyone at the same time,
the way an ethernet hub does it.
For WDS (wireless distribution something), it acts as a store and
forward repeater. The WDS bridge builds a similar MAC address table
and only sends packets to the wireless access points that are
connected to the destination MAC address device. Effectively WDS is
nothing more than an extremely messy protocol to distribute MAC
bridging address tables between access points. It's not part of IEEE
802.11 or the FCC Part 15 rules.
These explain it fairly well.
http://www.proxim.com/support/techbulletins/TB-046.pdf
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/Sections-article78-page1.php
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