Actually a brouter is a very old term...mid-late 80's to early 90's I believe.
I have used the term in the past to describe devices that were bridges and not
routers, but that did have some Layer 3 visibility. There were also devices
called bridging routers ...ie routers that bridge..novel concept. In that same
time frame there appeared to be some confusion as to exact terminology. Novell
had a program called brgen that allowed you to "bridge" two subnets together.
It was in fact a Layer 3 program because they connected two IPX subnets
together. They later changed the name to routegen (i think...its been a while)
to reflect the fact that it routed. Today everything just blends together. We
have switches that were actually bridges and now switches have became routers.
Interesting to watch how everything swirls together.
Karen
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Cunningham [mailto:billcu(_at_)citynet(_dot_)net]
Sent: Tue 2/12/2002 8:08 AM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Cc:
Subject: router types
I was wondering if anyone out there knows the difference in a router and
brouter. I know what a router is but a brouter must be new.