SmartBridge: A scalable bridge architecture

As the number of hosts attached to a network increases beyond what can be connected by a single local area network (LAN), forwarding packets between hosts on different LANs becomes an issue. Two common solutions to the forwarding problem are IP routing and spanning tree bridging. IP routing scales well, but imposes the administrative burden of managing subnets and assigning addresses. Spanning tree bridging, in contrast, requires no administration, but often does not perform well in a large network, because too much traffic must detour toward the root of the spanning tree, wasting link bandwidth. This paper introduces a new architecture, called SmartBridge, that combines the good features of IP routing and spanning tree bridging. We have implemented the SmartBridge design for 10 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s Ethernet LANs, using standard PC hardware with off-the-shelf network interface cards and running our algorithms in software. Our 100 Mb/s system runs at full link bandwidth.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: SIGCOMM
• Authors: Thomas L. Rodeheffer, Chandramohan A. Thekkath, Darrell C. Anderson
• Keywords: Communications, IP Routing Scales, Link Bandwidth, SIGCOMM 2000, Spanning Tree