Chapter 33 Maintenance Screens
ZyWALL 5/35/70 Series User’s Guide
591
Figure 345 Synchronization Fail
33.5 The Device Mode Screen
Use this screen to configure your ZyWALL as a router or a bridge. In router mode, the
ZyWALL functions as a router. In bridge mode, the ZyWALL functions as a transparent
firewall (also known as a bridge firewall).
Introduction To Transparent Bridging
A transparent bridge is invisible to the operation of a network in that it does not modify the
frames it forwards. The bridge checks the source address of incoming frames on the port and
learns MAC addresses to associate with that port. All future communications to that MAC
address will only be sent on that port.
The bridge gradually builds a host MAC-address-to-port mapping table such as in the
following example, during the learning process.
For example, if a bridge receives a frame via port 1 from host A (MAC address
00a0c5123478), the bridge associates host A with port 1. When the bridge receives another
frame on one of its ports with destination address 00a0c5123478, it forwards the frame
directly through port 1 after checking the internal table.
The bridge takes one of these actions after it checks the destination address of an incoming
frame with its internal table:
• If the table contains an association between the destination address and any of the bridge's
ports aside from the one on which the frame was received, the frame is forwarded out the
associated port.
Table 201 MAC-address-to-port Mapping Table
HOST MAC
ADDRESS
PORT
00a0c5123456 3
00a0c5123478 (host A) 1
00a0c512349a 3
00a0c51234bc 2
00a0c51234de 4
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