Administrator’s Handbook
Link: Ethernet Bridge
The Motorola 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 computer directly to the ser- vice provider’s network equipment with no intervening routing functionality, such as Network Address Trans- lation. 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 tele- phone 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 Motorola Netopia® Gateway to be compatible.
Bridges let you join two networks, so that they appear to be part of the same physical network. 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 bridg- ing table to identify which hosts are accessible 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 Motorola Netopia® will act as a
☛NOTE:
In this mode the Motorola 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 supported in conjunction with VLANs – individual WANs can be bridged to the LAN only if the WANs are part of a VLAN. (See “VLAN” on page 107 for more information.) The capability to bridge individual VLANs is supported only if the underlying encapsulation is
