A friend of mine was telling about his new Draytek 120 ADSL modem and how reliable it is.
He mentioned that it supports transparent PPPoE & PPPoA bridging.
I didn't get around to asking my friend at the time.
Why is this useful?
Is it useful in the case where an ISP supplies PPPoA to allow the public IP normally assigned to the router to be directly assigned to a PC running PPPoE? thereby bypassing the need for NAT?
PS: I don't want you to tell me what PPPoE is and what PPPoA is. I know what that is.
Why bridge them?
Best Answer
Sometimes you want the modem functionality of the device, but not its routing or firewall capabilities. For example, maybe you want to use PFSense as your router/firewall but you only have the device you mentioned. By putting it into bridge mode, it allows you to use PFSense as your PPPoE device, giving you all the flexibility and functionality of the PFSense firewall withotu having to NAT to a NAT.