[jinexile]

My boss wants me to bridge the two networks we have in our plant.

Basically there is:

admin network (internet/intranet, filesharing, email, office apps, etc)
machine network (these are all the computer operated machines in the plant.)

I generally take care of the admin and the electricians take care of the machine. We've gone through some upgrades and the new machines have some neat capabilities (ie. reporting via email when one of its motors have or is going to fail) but the machines have no external access to utilize this. Basically I want to bridge the two networks so the machines features can be taken advantage of.

I've never done any bridging before (my strengths are more software/hardware than network) and was wondering if anyone had any idea how I would go about it.

I have some idea but would like confirmation.

I have also read in some places that Windows XP can bridge a network by using two NICs and some simlpe configuration... has anyone done anything like this with XP?

Any opinions on an IPCOP bridge?

[Elbatrop1]

There are a couple of solutions to this:

If both networks use the same network address, then you could connect them using a switch. If they do not have the same network address, you can use a router to connect them.

[jinexile]

Thanks... I figured it was easier than I was making it out to be...