Windows 8.1 Bridging

[KiddKlean24]

I just want to know what bridging my connections does. I tried looking stuff up on google but everything was from 2007 and about DSL. Could someone tell me what bridging does???

[Scheer]

One example would be bridging your wireless connection over to your wired connection, I used to do it so I could hotspot my phone to my laptop and then plug my Xbox into the wired port on the laptop to get on Xbox Live at the cabin.

 

I'm sure there are other more productive uses for it... but that is the best example I've got for you.

[dalekphalm]

I just want to know what bridging my connections does. I tried looking stuff up on google but everything was from 2007 and about DSL. Could someone tell me what bridging does???

Essentially bridging connections takes two network connections, and puts a virtual bridge in place.

 

The end result is that the network connections can communicate with each other while bridged.

 

The most practical example of this is feeding one connection an internet signal from the other connection.

 

A specific example of this would be:

Say you have a laptop, connected to your router over Wifi. You could then "bridge" the wifi connection in the laptop to the ethernet connection in the laptop. You could then take an ethernet cable from the laptop and connect it to say, a Playstation. Therefore the Playstation would be getting internet from the ethernet connection on your laptop, which in turn gets its internet connection from the wifi connecting directly to your wifi router.

 

Does that make sense?

 

There are other examples, usually involving Virtual Machines, but the end result is generally the same. Sharing network resources between different network connections on a single computer.