Wireless Network Bridge

Network bridges have been in use for many years. As a matt1er of fact, the option to create a bridge is something that has been available in Windows since around the time of Windows ME, so you can only speculate as to how important it actually is. But what does it do? You see the option for a wireless network bridge in your network setup, but you've never been sure as to whether or not you should use it. Well there are a few scenarios in which a wireless network bridge would become necessary, so let's take a look at a few of them.

The first scenario is two different types of networks between two buildings. There might come a time when these buildings need to share their network files, but if you have never used a network extensively, you may have noticed that it is impossible to access the internal files of one network while connected to another.

This is just a simple fact of networking that cannot be changed, and it is presumed that the only way for the problem to be averted is for one network to make their files public. This would either entail an FTP server or a public HTTP server. This will require even more security, especially if you do not want the average person to be able to walk by with a laptop and steal your files.

A wireless network bridge would truly come in handy here because with it you will be able to use your own network while seeing the files on another. This means the files do not need to be public and everyone will be able to make use of them. These wireless network bridges can be connected to any type of network. For instance an Ethernet network will be able to interface with a token ring network, which is absolutely priceless

The other instance where this might be needed is one that is hard to imagine, but believe it or not there are some cases where this does happen. You could have a print server on another network in order to keep it separate from the other network processes. If this is the case, then it would obviously be prudent to create a wireless network bridge between your standard network and the print server's network.

There are a few different types of bridges, but the most common is the learning bridge. This is a bridge that checks every packet and every destination address, and over time it will be able to decide where each packet should go. This is a great innovation, and due to the technology involved in the wireless bridge, packets can be sent simultaneously without collision. This is an old technology, but it is one that we will not be decommissioning any time soon.

A wireless network bridge is something that any office environment can take advantage of. That being said, start looking into ways to incorporate this today. No doubt you read this and a few ideas occurred to you, so get to it!