Patent ID: 7116672

Claim:
A method for controlling flooding in a bridged network having a bridge connected to a plurality of networks, the method comprising: passing a packet to a filtering module, and indicating a MAC address associated with the packet to the filtering module; determining whether the received MAC address exists in a table or needs to be added as an entry to the table; if the MAC address already exists in the table then incrementing a packet count field, the packet count field associated with the MAC address already existing in the table and indicating how many packets have been sent to the MAC address; if a quiet flag associated with the MAC address is not set to true within the table and a flooding timer associated with the MAC address has not expired, the flooding timer initially set to a first predetermined value and decremented periodically, then broadcasting the received packet to a plurality of interfaces; and if the quiet flag associated with the MAC address is set within the table and a restart timer associated with the table has expired, the restart timer initially set to a second predetermined value and decremented periodically, then; resetting the quiet flag in the table to false; and setting a flooding timer to an initial value; and broadcasting the received packet to a plurality of interfaces.