Bridge wireless and cable vlan

[george]

Hi,

Is there a way i can bridge a wireless and a cable vlan? Client requirements are that wireless and cable users will be in the same subnet. I am running a C1812W router. Configuration examples in cisco.com only include wireless vlans.

Thanks

./George G

[smalkeric]

It is possible to bridge both the VLANs. As long as the configuration on the wireless router and that of the switch that connects the wireless users and cable users are correct, the setup will work without any issues.

[scottmac]

While it is possible, and probably done fairly often, it may not be a "good thing."

Keep in mind that a bridge will pass all broadcasts & multicasts (think ARP & routing protocols) ... so you'll be consuming possibly precious bandwidth on (useless-->performance degrading) traffic.

IF at all possible, creating the wireless link as any other WAN, with a router at each end, will permit you to filter out useless(at least) or performance degrading(at worse) traffic at each end.

Routers can be configured to pass traffic that is not normally routable (SNA, NETBIOS/NETBEUI, LAT, etc...) and still block unwanted broadcast & multicast traffic.

It's situational: if it's a short link (so you are getting max bandwidth) and the LAN at either end is fairly small (so there's not much "bad" traffic, then you can usually get by with bridging. Long spans (minimum bandwidth) and/or large LANs on either or both ends would benefit greatly by putting in (at least one) a router at the "largest LAN" side.

For the money and effort spent creating and maintaining the link, throwing away the bandwidth to broadcast/multicast traffic seems counterproductive.

FWIW

Scott