Advanced -> Ethernet Bridge - Netopia 2200 series Software User's Manual

Link: Advanced -> Ethernet Bridge
The Netopia Gateway can be used as a bridge, rather than a router. A bridge is a device
that joins two networks. As an Internet access device, a bridge connects the home com-
puter directly to the service provider's network equipment with no intervening routing func-
tionality, such as Network Address Translation. Your home computer becomes just another
address on the service provider's network. In a DSL connection, the bridge serves simply
to convey the digital data information back and forth over your telephone lines in a form
that keeps it separate from your voice telephone signals.
If your service provider's network is set up to provide your Internet connectivity via bridge
mode, you can set your Netopia Gateway to be compatible.
Bridges let you join two networks, so that they appear to be part of the same physical net-
work. As a bridge for protocols other than TCP/IP, your Gateway keeps track of as many as
512 MAC (Media Access Control) addresses, each of which uniquely identifies an individual
host on a network. Your Gateway uses this bridging table to identify which hosts are acces-
sible through which of its network interfaces. The bridging table contains the MAC address
of each packet it sees, along with the interface over which it received the packet. Over
time, the Gateway learns which hosts are available through its WAN port and/or its LAN
port.
When configured in Bridge Mode, the Netopia will act as a pass-through device and allow
the workstations on your LAN to have public addresses directly on the internet.
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Bridging per WAN is supported in conjunction with VLANs – individual WANs can be bridged
to the LAN only if the WANs are part of a VLAN. (See
mation.) The capability to bridge individual VLANs is supported only if the underlying encap-
sulation is RFC1483-Bridged (ether-llc).
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NOTE:
In this mode the Netopia is providing NO firewall protection as is afforded by
NAT. Also, only the workstations that have a public address can access the
internet. This can be useful if you have multiple static public IPs on the LAN.
"VLAN" on page 106 for more infor-