User's Manual
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and mesh networks. More-over, thanks to the innovative FluidMAX™ patent pending technology,
point-to-multipoint links can be created. This also gives to the user the ability to create mixed
networks architectures (shown in Fig. 4.1) leading to higher performance and flexibility in the
deployment. In the following section we describe how to build point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and
mesh networks with the Fluidmesh products.
Fig. 4.1 - General Network Architecture That Can Be Built
Using a Combination of FM Units
4.1 Point-to-Point Wireless Bridge
A wireless bridge enables two local networks (i.e., network segments) to communicate with each
other as depicted in Fig. 4.2.
Fig. 4.2 - Point-To-Point Network Architecture
The wireless bridge is defined as “transparent” because its activity is transparent to the network hosts.
In other words, the wireless bridge forwards packets from one network segment to the other according
to a “forwarding table” which is built by learning the network topology from the analysis of the
incoming traffic. In this configuration, no explicit interaction between the wireless bridge and the
network hosts takes place. The two network segments, connected to both sides of the wireless
bridge, will share the same IP addressing class. Thus, each network host must use a unique IP address,