subject: Wireless Bridges Creating A Bridge Between Multiple Lans [print this page] In wireless networking the bridging mode facilitates multiple wireless access points to link with each other thereby fulfilling the purpose of joining multiple local area networks. Various Wireless Bridge exist each capable of performing a defined range of tasks. These bridges may be hardware component which are physically and logically separated by means of different protocol addresses. But it is not mandatory that these bridges need to be a hardware device because some renowned operating systems have already in-built software which assists in bridging different protocols. Some of these operating systems include Windows, Linux, and Mac.
The wireless access points and routers offer a bridging mode or sometimes a repeater mode both of which are capable of carrying out a common function. The only difference is that in the bridge mode, two different protocols get connected with each other while in the repeater mode it relays the same protocol type. These bridging devices work in pairs which meant that they have a point-to-point access. But as variations can be possible in bridging hence multiple bridges can also be connected just by using a single central device and in that case it can be termed as point-to-multipoint access.
WDS or Wireless Distribution System can also facilitate bridging. These bridges can also be set up as an access point-client relationship which necessitates the wireless devices to be used as a bridge carrying the same identity termed as the SSID and a specific radio channel. Bridging applications prove effective in connecting two different LANs existing in two different commercial locations. Bridging provides propagation of data through a device without traversing a network stack. Two bridge networks are basically constituents of a single subnet under the IP. A DHCP request also pops up in case wired and wireless networks are bridged.
It should be noted that in wireless bridging the default gateway changes in each unit while the DNS server remains the same. A substantial amount of bandwidth is utilized by the wireless access points while they are operating in the bridging mode. Clients logged on bridged Wi-Fi networks generally share the same bandwidth of the bridge devices and this results slower performance in bridging mode.
