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Any device that connects two dissimilar media into one network is a bridge.


This is why i've always been annoyed by DSL companies and their insistance that they give you a DSL Modem, not a DSL bridge. Every time I talked to tech support I'd complain about my DSL bridge and then go back and say modem. Finaly I've convinced myself to use their wrong terminology just to simplify things.

Now, the strange thing is that a month ago I was sitting in my EE class and the professor started describing bridged ethernet exactly as I'd always thought of switched ethernet. The text confirmed that he wasn't just making it up as he went along. The basic reason that I came up with for this is that no traffic goes over a bridge that doesn't need to, just like a switch.

Matthew