brctl(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | INSTANCES | PORTS | AGEING | SPANNING TREE PROTOCOL | NOTES | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | COLOPHON

BRCTL(8)                                                        BRCTL(8)

NAME         top

       brctl - ethernet bridge administration

SYNOPSIS         top

       brctl [command]

DESCRIPTION         top

       brctl is used to set up, maintain, and inspect the ethernet
       bridge configuration in the Linux kernel.

       An ethernet bridge is a device commonly used to connect different
       networks of ethernets together, so that these ethernets will
       appear as one ethernet to the participants.

       Each of the ethernets being connected corresponds to one physical
       interface in the bridge. These individual ethernets are bundled
       into one bigger ('logical') ethernet, this bigger ethernet
       corresponds to the bridge network interface.

INSTANCES         top

       The command brctl addbr <name> creates a new instance of the
       ethernet bridge. The network interface corresponding to the
       bridge will be called <name>.

       The command brctl delbr <name> deletes the instance <name> of the
       ethernet bridge. The network interface corresponding to the
       bridge must be down before it can be deleted!

       The command brctl show shows all current instances of the
       ethernet bridge.

PORTS         top

       Each bridge has a number of ports attached to it. Network traffic
       coming in on any of these ports will be forwarded to the other
       ports transparently, so that the bridge is invisible to the rest
       of the network (i.e. it will not show up in traceroute(8) ).

       The command brctl addif <brname> <ifname> will make the interface
       <ifname> a port of the bridge <brname>. This means that all
       frames received on <ifname> will be processed as if destined for
       the bridge. Also, when sending frames on <brname>, <ifname> will
       be considered as a potential output interface.

       The command brctl delif <brname> <ifname> will detach the
       interface <ifname> from the bridge <brname>.

       The command brctl show <brname> will show some information on the
       bridge and its attached ports.

AGEING         top

       The bridge keeps track of ethernet addresses seen on each port.
       When it needs to forward a frame, and it happens to know on which
       port the destination ethernet address (specified in the frame) is
       located, it can 'cheat' by forwarding the frame to that port
       only, thus saving a lot of redundant copies and transmits.

       However, the ethernet address location data is not static data.
       Machines can move to other ports, network cards can be replaced
       (which changes the machine's ethernet address), etc.

       brctl showmacs <brname> shows a list of learned MAC addresses for
       this bridge.

       brctl setageing <brname> <time> sets the ethernet (MAC) address
       ageing time, in seconds. After <time> seconds of not having seen
       a frame coming from a certain address, the bridge will time out
       (delete) that address from the Forwarding DataBase (fdb).

       brctl setgcint <brname> <time> sets the garbage collection
       interval for the bridge <brname> to <time> seconds. This means
       that the bridge will check the forwarding database for timed out
       entries every <time> seconds.

SPANNING TREE PROTOCOL         top

       Multiple ethernet bridges can work together to create even larger
       networks of ethernets using the IEEE 802.1d spanning tree
       protocol. This protocol is used for finding the shortest path
       between two ethernets, and for eliminating loops from the
       topology. As this protocol is a standard, Linux bridges will
       interwork properly with other third party bridge products.
       Bridges communicate with each other by sending and receiving
       BPDUs (Bridge Protocol Data Units). These BPDUs can be recognised
       by an ethernet destination address of 01:80:c2:00:00:00.

       The spanning tree protocol can also be turned off (for those
       situations where it just doesn't make sense, for example when
       this Linux box is the only bridge on the LAN, or when you know
       that there are no loops in the topology.)

       brctl(8) can be used for configuring certain spanning tree
       protocol parameters. For an explanation of these parameters, see
       the IEEE 802.1d specification (or send me an email). The default
       values should be just fine. If you don't know what these
       parameters mean, you probably won't feel the desire to tweak
       them.

       brctl stp <bridge> <state> controls this bridge instance's
       participation in the spanning tree protocol. If <state> is "on"
       or "yes" the STP will be turned on, otherwise it will be turned
       off.  When turned off, the bridge will not send or receive BPDUs,
       and will thus not participate in the spanning tree protocol. If
       your bridge isn't the only bridge on the LAN, or if there are
       loops in the LAN's topology, DO NOT turn this option off. If you
       turn this option off, please know what you are doing.

       brctl setbridgeprio <bridge> <priority> sets the bridge's
       priority to <priority>. The priority value is an unsigned 16-bit
       quantity (a number between 0 and 65535), and has no dimension.
       Lower priority values are 'better'. The bridge with the lowest
       priority will be elected 'root bridge'.

       brctl setfd <bridge> <time> sets the bridge's 'bridge forward
       delay' to <time> seconds.

       brctl sethello <bridge> <time> sets the bridge's 'bridge hello
       time' to <time> seconds.

       brctl setmaxage <bridge> <time> sets the bridge's 'maximum
       message age' to <time> seconds.

       brctl setpathcost <bridge> <port> <cost> sets the port cost of
       the port <port> to <cost>. This is a dimensionless metric.

       brctl setportprio <bridge> <port> <priority> sets the port
       <port>'s priority to <priority>. The priority value is an
       unsigned 8-bit quantity (a number between 0 and 255), and has no
       dimension. This metric is used in the designated port and root
       port selection algorithms.

NOTES         top

       brctl(8) is obsolete. Some features such as STP guard, harpin
       mode, fastleave and root block are intentionally not implemented
       in this command.  Instead use bridge command from iproute2
       package for a more full set of features.

SEE ALSO         top

       iptables(8)

AUTHOR         top

       Lennert Buytenhek <buytenh@gnu.org> Stephen Hemminger
       <stephen@networkplumber.org>

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the bridge-utils (Ethernet bridge utilities)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at [unknown
       -- if you know, please contact man-pages@man7.org] If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to bridge@osdl.org.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/shemminger/bridge-utils.git⟩
       on 2020-12-18.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2020-06-23.)  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

                            November 7, 2001                    BRCTL(8)

Pages that refer to this page: network_namespaces(7)brctl(8)