Configuring network bridging

Oracle Solaris 11 provides a wonderful feature that offers the possibility to deploy network bridges (layer 2, Datalink) that connect separated network segments and share the broadcast domain without the requirement of a router using a packet-forwarding mechanism: Network 1 | Bridge | Network 2.

The real effect of configuring and using Network Bridging is that all machines are able to communicate with each other as if they were on the same network. However, as a bridge works in a promiscuous mode, it uses some techniques in order to prevent creating loops such as Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which is used with switches, and Transparent Interconnect of Lots of Links (TRILL), which has a small advantage when compared to STP because it always uses the short path to forward packages without shutting down a physical link as STP does.

Getting ready

To follow this recipe, it's necessary to create a complex setup. We must have three virtual machines (VirtualBox or VMware...