Ranji,
A BVI is in fact quite similar to an SVI (interface Vlan). You can define a software bridging between various ports of a router, similar to switching between various ports on a switch. If the ports on a switch belong to the same VLAN and the switch is capable of multilayer switching, you can create an interface Vlan for that VLAN and allow the hosts in that VLAN to use the IP address of the interface Vlan as their default gateway.
The same goes for interface BVI - Bridged Virtual Interface. When configuring software bridging, you define a group of interfaces that are bridged - the router performs bridging (i.e. software-based switching) of frames between all member ports of a bridge group, in essence forming a single broadcast domain - an IP subnet. If the devices in the common bridge group want to access other IP networks, they need a gateway, so you create an associated interface BVI that is also a part of the bridge group, and devices in the bridge group then use the IP address of the BVI interface as their gateway.
For exampe, imagine a router with two FastEthernet interfaces:
bridge irb
!
interface FastEthernet0/0
no ip address
no shutdown
bridge-group 1
!
interface FastEthernet0/1
no ip address
no shutdown
bridge-group 1
!
interface BVI1
ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0
no shutdown
!
bridge 1 route ip
This configuration would make your router to basically behave as a 2-port "switch" on its Fa0/0 and Fa0/1 interfaces, and devices connected to these ports would use the 10.0.0.1 as their default gateway to other networks.
You rarely configure bridging exactly this way these days, as switches are orders of magnitude faster and have way more ports. Still, there are situations where you need to bridge two interfaces, taking packets out of frames of one technology and putting them into frames of a different technology, without routing them, just repackaging but still carrying them between interfaces. This is often done in, say, DSL if the router is configured to act in bridge mode - take IP packets coming to Ethernet interface and simply repackage them into PPP or ATM+AAL5 cells on the DSL WAN port (and vice versa).
Best regards,
Peter
