Routers , Bridges & Backbone

The facilities on most LANs are very powerful. Most organizations do not wish to have small isolated islands of computing facilities confined to the buildings. They want to extend facilities over a wider area so that groups can work without having to be located together. Two or more LANs can be connected with specialized devices called Routers and bridges. Bridge connects LANs of the same type but, router is a more intelligent component that can interconnect many different types of computer network. Then, we can have Backbone Networks, which are high-bandwidth channels that typically connect LANs with each other, and are often referred to as backbones.