Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!mintaka!olivea!apple!hercules!frisbee.cisco.com!allan
From: allan@frisbee.cisco.com (Allan Leinwand)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Intelligent bridges vs. routers
Message-ID: <21892@hercules.csl.sri.com>
Date: 24 Oct 90 23:47:50 GMT
Sender: usenet@csl.sri.com
Reply-To: allan@frisbee.cisco.com (Allan Leinwand)
Organization: cisco Systems, Inc. - Menlo Park, CA
Lines: 28


I can think of a few downfalls other than broadcast storms:

   1.  an intelligent bridge will not separate your address space like a
router.  Thus, your two subnets will exist on one logical LAN.  This
may result in configuring routers to understand this situation.

   2.  a bridge will not allow you to control the network for security
reasons as well as a router if you are running multiple protocols (such
as IP and DECnet).  With a bridge all of your security control is usually
based upon the MAC level address of a host.  Keeping up with boards
swaps and changing MAC addresses can become a configuration nightmare.
With a router, the security can usually be setup to understand the
network protocol level addresses.  This usually makes security
management a bit easier.

   3.  dare I say this?  With many routers having SNMP agents, this
gives you a basis for network management.  Yet, (contradicting myself
:-)) some bridges now answer SNMP.

   4.  the cost of a low end, two port router (which has router
functionality AND bridge functionality) may surprise you....

Thanks,

Allan Leinwand
cisco Systems
leinwand@cisco.com