That was a tongue in cheek quiz question Bob :-)
------Origineel bericht------
Van: Bob Armstrong
Afzender: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Aan: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Beantwoorden: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Onderwerp: RE: [HECnet] DECnet et al
Verzonden: 17 juli 2011 20:34
What is the difference between a bridge and a switch?
Ok, I won't debate nomenclature. At least now I think we're all talking
about the same thing :-)
Bob
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DECnet phase 4 is about as old as ethernet and VMS. Ethernet was the main driving force for phase 4 owing to the large number of adjacent nodes and the sheer number.
Phase 3 does not have areas and only recognizes 255 hosts max. It did have circuit routing (of course)
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-----Original Message-----
From: Gregg Levine <gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com>
Sender: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 14:26:07
To: <hecnet at update.uu.se>
Reply-To: hecnet at Update.UU.SESubject: Re: [HECnet] DECnet et al
On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Bob Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com> wrote:
A bridge (hw) maintains a list of mac addresses it sees at each port.
FWIW, that's a "switch" at least in the common usage of the word over
here.
Bob
Hello!
I agree! Now first things first. When did DECNET first appear? And
more importantly, based on what systems and using what means to
connect each system.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
On 2011-07-17 20.22, Peter Lothberg wrote:
But HECnet as a whole is not connected to this segment...
I thought the majority of it was... There are a few people, like me, who
are using Multinet but only a few cases. I thought pretty much everything
was bridged.
[FWIW, Multinet tunnels a point-to-point DECnet link, essentially like a
DDCMP link, over UDP. For that you really need to have a router at either
end to pass traffic for other machines on either LAN.]
Bob
Johnny,
If you can make a DECnet router, (l3...) or make the Internet look like point-to-point
(ddcmp) links, it would work 'better'. As sending all areas as 'rip
vectors' every second is not'usefull'.
Yes. The bridge is simple, but not really ideal. It causes a lot of traffic that would be better if we could restrict.
But for a router, we need to talk the DECnet routing packets, which I think might not be that bad, but then also route DECnet packets, which means much more cleverness. I'm afraid I definitely don't have time for all that.
But it would be nice. You could even be extra clever and only present one DECnet node with n interfaces, one for each endpoing that currently have a bridge. So it would seem like everyone had a connection to that router, but no direct connection to the other endpoints. So we'd have routing traffic running p-t-p to the virtual router, but no need to spread that traffic all over the earth, as is done today. Each end would still be running the bridge just like today, but the central hub would be rather different.
And I'm offline, as I only speak Multinet and Decnet in GRE... (and
takes for endpoints?)
Yeah. I know... I think you are not the only one not at all on the bridge, but I can't remember anyone else off hand.
Johnny
What is the difference between a bridge and a switch?
Ok, I won't debate nomenclature. At least now I think we're all talking
about the same thing :-)
Bob
DEC called them bridges and all of them were two-port devices.
When the DEChub 90 and 900 series came out DEC started to use the term switch too.
Verzonden vanaf mijn draadloze BlackBerry -toestel
When did DECNET first appear?
Mid-1970s, depending on which version ("Phase") you consider to be
"DECnet". I'm sure someone will provide a more specific date.
using what means to connect each system.
Point to point serial (note that doesn't mean RS-232!) links (rarely
parallel) using various means for the actual physical connection.
DECnet definitely predates Ethernet by many years, if that's your point.
Bob
What is the difference between a bridge and a switch? I don't want to get into a discussion about layer 2 and layer 3 swutching but afaik a bridge is a two port layer 2 switch.
A bridge keeps the traffic that it forwards to a minimum. Which is the difference with a repeater.
------Origineel bericht------
Van: Bob Armstrong
Afzender: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Aan: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Beantwoorden: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Onderwerp: RE: [HECnet] DECnet et al
Verzonden: 17 juli 2011 20:24
A bridge (hw) maintains a list of mac addresses it sees at each port.
FWIW, that's a "switch" at least in the common usage of the word over
here.
Bob
Verzonden vanaf mijn draadloze BlackBerry -toestel
On 2011-07-17 20.22, hvlems at zonnet.nl wrote:
A bridge (hw) maintains a list of mac addresses it sees at each port. A bridge will never forward a packet with a destination address on that list.
The bridge ( program) learns which mac addresses live behibd what port and thus knows what traffic to forward and what not. Broadcst, multicast traffic is always forwarded.
The only difference between a DEBET and the program is that the program ignores all other protocols
This is essentially what a switch does as well.
I think in the old DEC nomenclature, a bridge only connected two segments, so it becomes a very binary "the address is either on this segment, or on the other side". A switch can, and should, be more clever, since it should either not forward the packet at all, if the destination is on the same port as the packet in on, or just forward it to the specific port where the destination exists, if it is on another port. Unknown destinations needs to be treated the same as multicast, in that it needs to be sent to all ports.
I might have called my program a switch as well, except for other reasons I thought a bridge was a better name for it. Also, in the beginning, it did not keep any destination cache around. Improvements along the way. :-)
Johnny
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-----Original Message-----
From: "Bob Armstrong"<bob at jfcl.com>
Sender: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 11:10:11
To:<hecnet at Update.UU.SE>
Reply-To: hecnet at Update.UU.SESubject: RE: [HECnet] DECnet et al
The term segment is used because each node that runs the
bridge program does filter packets that should stay local.
Ah, so the bridge program is not really a bridge (at least not in the way
I use the word). Usually I think of a bridging two networks as meaning to
copy all traffic from network A to network B and vice versa. If the box or
program does something smart about deciding which traffic should go where,
then it's a "router" (or at least a "switch").
How does the bridge program decide what DECnet messages to bridge and what
to drop?
Thanks,
Bob
On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Bob Armstrong <bob at jfcl.com> wrote:
A bridge (hw) maintains a list of mac addresses it sees at each port.
FWIW, that's a "switch" at least in the common usage of the word over
here.
Bob
Hello!
I agree! Now first things first. When did DECNET first appear? And
more importantly, based on what systems and using what means to
connect each system.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."
