Wireless bridge and access point

[glio]

What is a wireless bridge? What is an access point? What's the difference between the two? Under what circumstance should I use wireless bridge/access point?

Jimmy

 

[bcastner]

You would use a wireless bridge to connected two wired network segments together in lieu of cable.

An Access Point allows wireless network adapters in clients to connect to the network. Think of it as a wireless switch.

 

[wybnormal]

The bridge is just what it says, it's bridges a cabled connection over wireless to another cabled network. For example, I have a server sitting in a room connected to a bridge. Why? Because the OS does not like wireless cards but to the OS, the bridge looks just like any other hub on the network and is wired so it's happy. The bridge only connects to the access point and will not allow anything else to connect to it directly, in fact, it does not show up on the network scans.

An access point however, will allow client to connect to it directly. But remember an acces point is a shared device, much like a hub. If one user is streaming audio/video, it will impact everyone else on the AP. By the same token, broadcast storms are death to an AP and it's connections.

MikeS

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