This is a cross-over from the linux forum, http://www.computing.net/linux/wwwboard/forum/17973.html I have 12 IPs bound to one mac address on my server. I wish to assign ips to computers within my LAN (actually, only one) going through the 2nd NIC. I want, for all intents and purposes, the computer on my lan to look as though it is connected directly. what's the deal with a "bridge"? will it continue to hide the MAC address of the system on my lan? any information / links to tutorials would be appreciated. Based on the responses to http://www.computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/89108.html , I'm lead to believe that a bridge does nothing... is this accurate? Any ideas? THanks.

Man, I haven't heard about using a bridge in ages! But let me give you the scoop on a bridge. Back before there were switches, you really only had hubs and bridges. A bridge was the original switch. Companies that say had hundreds of PCs had one LAN. That caused for a lot of collisions that slows the network down. To manage these large LANs, IT folk would put in a bridge. A bridge would keep a list of all the MAC addresses in a list and associate it with one of it's ports. So if Computer A has a MAC address on port 1 and wanted to communicate to Computer B that was on port 1 then that traffice was filtered from talking to anyone on port 2. That freed up the computers on port 2 to talk without the collision enviroment presented with hubs. Taking that concept one step further, and appying it to multiple ports, you get voila...a switch. Neither a bridge nor a switch HIDE MAC addresses, they simply filter traffic based on MAC addresses. Now the problem I'm having with your posting is that you are putting in a second NIC and you are assigning multiple IP addresses. IP addresses and MAC addresses are two totally seperate things. If you are breaking up you LAN using different network IP addresses then you need to be talking about routing, not switching nor bridging. If you want your server to act as a member of two different IP addresses and pass traffic, then you want to enable the servers RRAS (or whatever routing feature your servers OS has) or get a router to do the job for you. D

alright, so no on the bridge. I'm not looking to make the server a router- more of a gateway. like I said, there are 12IPs bound to one NIC's MAC address. The other NIC connects to my LAN. I want to be able to essnetially "give" one of the computers within my lan an IP, and have it believe its ip is 64.55.20.148, and have the ip also be that as far as the world is concerned (makes life easier)