Understanding Bridge Topologies
point to point, connecting just two locations together. Figure 14-1 shows a typical bridge topology for point-to-point systems. Figure 14-1. Point-to-Point Bridge Topologymultipoint systems are being installed today. In most systems, one bridge is usually defined as the central, or master, bridge. This provides the central point of data flow from the remote sites. (See Figure 14-2.) Figure 14-2. Point-to-Multipoint Bridge TopologyIn some cases, the bridges might also act as an AP permitting individual wireless clients to associate to the bridge. The number of possible remote sites is based on the vendor, but the actual limitation should be addressed by the overall bandwidth needed by each end user. The central or master bridge is the limiting point. In some cases, it is desirable to have multiple master bridges, operating on separate, nonoverlapping frequencies, as shown in Figure 14-3. Figure 14-3. Point-to-Multipoint Bridge Topologyvirtual private network (VPN) tunnels over the RF links for a more secure system. This can also permit some types of traffic filtering to improve the throughput of the wireless link. |