Routing
The main trend of internetworking continues to be the interconnection of ever faster LANs at ever higher speeds
Devices used in LAN interconnection
- Repeater – physical layer, handles bits and non-data symbols
- Bridge – data link layer, handles frames
- Switch – data link layer, handles frames
- Router – network layer, handles packets
- Gateway – upper layers, used to interconnect totally different systems (such as a DECNet-SNA gateway)
Internetworking is based on routers and network layer addresses (IP addresses)
All the devices connected into the network must use the same network protocol - the Internet Protocol (IP)