Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Can't ping remote system

[Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com>]

>> I called AT&T and they say the Westell 6100 modem/router I have will
>> not respond to pings.  They said I could put it into bridged mode and
>> set up PPPoE on the computer connected to it which would cause ICMP
>> packets to pass through to the computer.  Would you guys recommend
>> that?  For sure I won't attempt this until I'm in the same room as the
>> device.
>
> You'll lose the router functionality doing that.  If you need to connect
> other machines to it, then it will only be able to act as a switch, meaning
> that everything you connect to it will either need to be on the same subnet,
> or you need to configure another machine to act as a router if you need to
> connect different subnets.  And the machine will also need to be always on
> in order to provide internet connectivity to other machines, since it will
> be the one that talks to the ADSL modem.
>
> You'll also be losing NAT, which is quite nice for redirecting traffic on
> specific ports to whatever machine you want.  As with the router
> functionality, you will need to configure a Linux machine to do NAT if you
> want to keep having that feature.
>
> There's also the issue of not being able to set up a firewall on the router
> itself anymore.  You can still do that on the target machine itself, of
> course, but there's the issue of creating a firewall on the machine you want
> to protect, which is not optimal (the analogy here being that if you want to
> protect something, you put it behind a wall rather than hardening it; even
> if it's hardened, it still gets hit.)
>
> Or, you might not care about any of the above, in which case using the
> device as a simple ASDL modem (which is what bridging means) will work just
> fine.

That's actually exactly what I want.  The Gentoo system connected to
the single-port Westell modem/router is already set up as a
router/firewall and it is the one doing NAT.  Thank you for the
run-down.  Now I feel like I know exactly what this change will mean.

- Grant