Netopia 2200 - Manual (Page 102)

102
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 ser vice provider’s network equipment with no inter vening routing func-
tionality, such as Network Address Translation. Your home computer becomes just another
address on the ser vice provider’s network. In a DSL connection, the bridge ser ves simply
to convey the digital data information back and for th over your telephone lines in a form
that keeps it separate from your voice telephone signals.
If your ser vice 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 par t 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 inter faces. The bridging table contains the MAC address
of each packet it sees, along with the inter face over which it received the packet. Over
time, the Gateway learns which hosts are available through its WAN por t and/or its LAN
por t.
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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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.
Bridging per WAN is suppor ted in conjunction with VLANs – individual WANs can be bridged
to the LAN only if the WANs are par t of a VLAN. (See
“VLAN” on page 106 for more infor-
mation.) The capability to bridge individual VLANs is suppor ted only if the underlying encap-
sulation is RFC1483-Bridged (ether-llc).