BRIDGE DEVICE HAVING SELF-LEARNING FUNCTION BETWEEN NETWORK MEDIUM AND INTEGRATED CIRCUIT AND METHOD BASED ON THE SAME

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To enable extension of a distance between nodes beyond a collision domain by connecting a connection circuit to the first and the second ports and a memory and passing a port through or blocking it based on the first instruction from the first plural instructions and the second instruction from the second plural instructions. SOLUTION: A bridge device 21 judges whether information from network segments 20, 24, 26, 28 and 30 are to be transferred to other segments or not, blocks a packet destined to a non-local address and helps the packet destined for the non-local address to be transferred. By observing a source address of a packet which receives a variety of ports 32, 34, 36, 38, 40 and 42, the bridge device 21 learns that a network segment is related to the address. Then, the information of an address position on the source address of the packet is updated and it is decided if a packet based on the destination address of the packet is transferred.