Ethernet bridging essentially involves combining an ethernet interface with one or more virtual TAP interfaces and bridging them together under the umbrella of a single bridge interface. Ethernet bridges represent the software analog to a physical ethernet switch. The ethernet bridge can be thought of as a kind of software switch which can be used to connect multiple ethernet interfaces (either physical or virtual) on a single machine while sharing a single IP subnet. By bridging a physical ethernet NIC with an OpenVPN-driven TAP interface at two separate locations, it is possible to logically merge both ethernet networks, as if they were a single ethernet subnet.