bridge/router

The word brouter is a made-up word consisting of the first letters of the bridge and the last letters of the router. These Internetworking components are also called hybrid routers.

In terms of functionality, brouters are positioned above bridges. They have routing functionalities as spanning tree algorithms and thus the possibility of implementing redundant structures, load distribution algorithms and filter mechanisms.

Instead of the term brouter, the term "routing bridge" is also used for these devices. An alternative hierarchy representation results from the different interpretation of the term brouter: the learning bridge evolved into the learning filter bridge and the routing bridge, while the router evolved into the multiprotocol router and the brouter in parallel. Brouter here does not mean a bridge with extended functionality, but the hybrid router that routes multiple protocols and handles the remaining data packets in bridge mode. Years ago, there was a tendency for bridge and router variants of the different product lines to converge in order to combine the advantages of both systems as much as possible.

The range of "pure" bridges and "pure" routers is becoming increasingly smaller, especially in the multiprotocol router area, since these devices are specially designed to be able to handle as many protocols as possible in a network in parallel - which means that the protocols that cannot be routed in these coupling elements must be made manageable by means of additional bridge functionality.