WHAT IS SWITCH?

Bridges are the simplest form of a network switch. This means that every network switch is a bridge, i.e. they have the same operating logic. Like network switches, they work in the data link part of the OSI layers. The difference is that bridges have two ports. The most basic task of bridges is to reduce the traffic load on the network.

SO HOW DO BRIDGES DO IT?

In order to decide whether an incoming data should be transmitted or not, an address information is needed. This address information is generated by learning the MAC addresses of the devices connected to the bridge. Bridges open the incoming data up to the MAC address section, create a MAC address table and add the information of which network the addresses belong to to the table. Thus, if there is an address belonging to the other side in the destination part of the data, the passage is allowed. Otherwise the data is blocked. In this way, the bridge placed between two independent networks prevents an increase in traffic density in one network or a fault in one line from affecting the other network.