Yes, I agree with you Ed. The word brouter is quite old. It had been more of
a marketing ploy than anything else. The idea was to make people believe that
a brouter is faster than a router, when doing Layer 2 switching. In reality,
though, those devices still needed to do packet processing (those ones that
used to do it in software) and "understand" that they need to use bridging
software, instead of routing software.
Regards.
Galina.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Mier [mailto:emier(_at_)mier(_dot_)com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 10:01 AM
To: 'Bill Cunningham'
Cc: 'ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org'
Subject: RE: router types
BROUTER = combined bridge and router. It was common a few years ago, when
multiple concurrent protocol stacks were running over an enterprise data
network (not then an Intranet), to route some protocols (IP, IPX, DECnet, etc.)
and bridge others (Netbeui/Netbios, etc.). Today almost everything's running
over or tunneled in IP.
ed mier
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Cunningham [mailto:billcu(_at_)citynet(_dot_)net]
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 8:08 AM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
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.