from my point of view i can define an Access Point as where you wireless clients can join a network.
A wireless bridge is where two wire networks can be joined. Now wireless bridging falls outside of the 802.1 protocols (this is what the manufacturers told me) thus two bridges need to be the same make to work, eg netgear and netgear, buffalo and buffalo for example. however they don't need to be identical bridges.
eg the Buffalo WLA-G54 can talk to another WLA-G54 or a WBR-G54, but not a bridge from D-Link, but it CAN talk to wireless PCI cards and centrino notebooks of any manufacturer because they are CLIENT machines and not bridges..
So access points will accept clients from any make, as this is the standard, but bridges will only communicate with like bridges.
i hope this is understandable...
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by FiL on 11/11/03 08:51 AM.</EM></FONT></P>