Chapter 3. Routers and LANs

Although routers are often thought of as wide-area network (WAN) devices, they can be equally useful in local-area networks (LANs). Routers, by virtue of their capability to communicate at both the data link layer and the network layer, can provide LAN administrators with a multitude of options for managing LANs and bolstering their performance.

Some of the many things that a router can do in a LAN environment include segment a LAN's media access and MAC broadcast domains, interconnect different LAN architectures, collapse a LAN's backbone into a single device, and provide a gateway to the WAN. This chapter examines all these LAN-level router functions.