More importantly, however, such broadcasts consume valuable CPU power on every host connected to the network. Another bridging network size-related issue involves duplicate names. In the earlier illustration, John broadcast a message to locate Mary. A small network might have just one Mary, but a large network may have many Marys, requiring some convention to distinguish one Mary from another, such as Mary1, Mary2 and Mary3. However, mis-typing Mary2 instead of Mary3 results in messages being directed to the wrong Mary, in effect, denying service to the actual Mary2.
Bridges tend to glue the network together, rather than partition it into manageable compartments.
But perhaps another user chooses to write a simple program that listens for broadcast requests and erroneously replies that it is the intended recipient. There is another, even more dangerous, threat that does not involve hackers. These devices, designed for a single user's Ethernet, reply on behalf of any address. When these devices are connected via a bridge at the headend, they will severely disrupt other subscribers' traffic. F inally, bridges tend to glue the network together, rather than partition it into manageable compartments.