3Com Corporation WL311 Manual De Usuario

Introduction

2

3Com Wireless Building-to-Building Bridges can be used for communicating among 
multiple (two or more) bridges, with each bridge connected to a particular building’s wired 
LAN. The next figure shows a bridging network in which four 3Com Building-to-Building 
Bridges are used to provide wireless connectivity among four buildings. This topology 
typically uses omnidirectional antennas for communication between bridges if bridging is 
desired among all buildings in the bridging network without restriction (see “Antennas 
and Cables” on page 3).

In this configuration, the wireless bridges make all four wired LANs appear to be 
connected by the same Ethernet cable. Using wireless bridges in this manner provides a 
cost-effective way to wirelessly link multiple wired LAN networks by eliminating the need 
to install cables between buildings.

An alternative point-to-multipoint configuration is shown in the following figure. 

In this example, the first building’s bridge is using an omnidirectional antenna while the 
other three buildings have bridges using directional antennas. In this case, the three 
bridges with directional antennas can communicate only with the bridge using the omni-
direction antenna; they cannot communicate directly with each other. The bridge using 
the omnidirectional antenna can communicate with the other three bridges.

CAUTION: This alternative, mixed-antenna point-to-multipoint topology, can 
possibly result in lower performance than a point-to-multipoint configuration that 
uses only omnidirectional antennas.