Brouter: the transparent bridge with shortest path in interconnected LANs

Abstract

Transparency is a popular feature in a distributed system where users can access any local or remote resources just as if they were local. The paper proposes a protocol which combines the features of transparency and shortest path. The result is a bridge which supports self learning and distributed routing computation. Since this bridge has all routing facilities as a router, it is called brouter (i.e. bridge+router). Brouters are compared with current bridge schemes. Also, performance aspects of the protocol are examined.<>