A HIGH-PERFORMANCE TRANSPARENT BRIDGE

The high performance transparent bridge (HPTB) is a multiport bridge i nterconnecting gigabit networks. The provision of specialized hardware support coupled with proper partitioning of bridging protocol entitie s makes it possible to process frames at very high rates. The HPTB arc hitecture allows concurrent bridging of asynchronous, synchronous and isochronous traffic among heterogeneous networks. It supports both tra ditional networks, such as variable packet size local area networks (L AN's), and cell-based networks, such as distributed queue dual bus (DQ DB) and metropolitan area networks (MAN's). This device is capable of interconnecting any combination of high speed LAN's of rates up to 800 Mbps and/or MAN's of rates up to 622 Mbps.