- Bridges
and switches operate at data link layer.
-
They make forwarding decision based on layer 2 addresses.
- In
most occasions, switches have a higher port density compared to bridges.
- Both
bridges and switches forward layer 2 broadcasts. They define broadcast
domain i.e. all ports within a bridge or a switch belong to the same
broadcast domain. A switch can further redefine the broadcast domain
by implementing VLAN.
- All
ports in a bridge belong to the same collision domain while an individual
port in a switch has its own collision domain.
- Switches
are hardware based and traffic forwarding is done through a specialized
hardware called ASIc. This makes switches much faster than bridges
that are software based.