Source routing bridge implementation (LANs)

Source routing is a bridging technique where the bridge makes a routing decision based on the contents of the media access control (MAC) frame header of the frame. This header consists of a routing information field, which immediately follows the source address field in the frame. The routing information field describes the path across one or more bridges to the ring containing the destination station. With source routing bridges, the source and destination addresses of the frame on the media are the MAC addresses of the originating and target stations, respectively. The operation of a source routing bridge is examined. An implementation example using the TMS380 token-ring-adapter chipset is presented.<>