Nortel BayStack 820, Installation And Reference Manual

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Using the Command Line Interface
206901-A
10-7
Bridging Commands
Although routing is preferred over bridging for transmitting data over wide area
connections, occasionally bridging is required. For example, when the data
packets to be transmitted are neither IP nor IPX (such as NetBEUI, SNA or
AppleTalk), or when the other end of the WAN connection supports only bridging.
Bridging uses an intelligent learning algorithm to build a
MAC-address-to-interface map, which the router uses to make forwarding or
filtering decisions for each packet it receives, whether the packet is from the LAN
side or from one of the WAN connections.
Table 10-2 lists the bridging commands.
{enable|disable} bridging <interface_name>
Enables or disables bridging over the specified interface. If the interface already
has IP/IPX routing enabled, then routing will take precedence. For example, if
both bridging and IP routing are enabled over interface profile1, IP data is routed,
and all non-IP data is bridged.
Example
BayStack> enable bridging profile1
Table 10-2. Bridging Commands
Command Page
{enable|disable} bridging <interface_name> 10-7
{enable|disable} learning 10-8
show bridging 10-8
show learning 10-8
show learning <interface_name> 10-9