nanog mailing list archives

Re: reliably detecting the presence of a bridge?


From: William Herrin <bill () herrin us>
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2015 10:19:37 -0500

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 4:48 AM, Dave Taht <dave.taht () gmail com> wrote:
I am curious if there is some sort of igmp or other form of message
that would reliably detect if a switch had a bridge on it. How could
deviceA detect deviceC was a bridge in this case?

Hi Dave,

Start with precision in language. An ethernet switch is one form of
ethernet bridge although the reverse is not necessarily true. So, a
switch is always a bridge by definition. Q.E.D.

From what you've posted, you don't want to detect the difference
between a switch and a bridge, you want to detect the difference
between a wired and wireless segment segment in the network. Is that
correct? Any wireless link or just radio? Any radio link or just
802.11 wifi? Are you just trying to detect stations behind wireless or
do you want to identify segments that are carried over wireless?

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin () dirtside com  bill () herrin us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>


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