What is the difference between a root bridge and a nonroot bridge?
A. The root unit is a Cisco Aironet bridge that is at the top, or starting point, of a wireless infrastructure. The root bridge usually has a connection to the main wired backbone LAN. The radio traffic from the LANs of the other bridges pass through this unit. Therefore, the root unit usually has connection to the LAN that originates or receives the most traffic. A nonroot bridge sometimes has the name remote or repeater bridge. A nonroot bridge is a bridge that establishes a connection to the root bridge or another repeater bridge to make the wired LAN to which the nonroot bridge connects part of the bridged LAN. The default configuration for Ethernet Bridges configures Ethernet Bridges as root. You must change this default configuration to nonroot to establish a link. Choose Configuration > Radio > Root > Off to set a bridge as nonroot in VxWorks. Click the Settings tab of the radio interface and change the station role to Non-Root to set a bridge as nonroot in Cisco IOS Software.
