Netgear DG834 bridge mode (PPPoE)

If you own a Netgear DG834 ADSL modem/router/bridge, and for some reason you'd like to terminate the PPPoE connection on another device, you'll probably be disappointed as we first were to see that there is no "bridge mode" option in the web interface, even after a firmware upgrade followed by a factory reset.

This doen't mean however that you can't. It's just undocumented... Here is how we finally got it up & running, after trying several procedures found here and there. The exact model we used is the DG834Bv2, but from what I've seen it should work with other similar devices as well (at least with other DG834B versions and also with DG834G variants).

- to begin with we installed the latest available firmware, V3.01.37 (we had to go to netgear.de for this, the international website didn't have it)

- this was followed by a factory reset

- then from the "basic settings" page/section we set "does your internet provider require a login" to "No"

- from the "LAN IP Setup" page/section we unchecked "use router as DHCP server"

- after going through these steps you'll have to edit the URL in your browser to go to the "mode.htm" page - this should redirect you to 192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?next_file=mode.htm ; on that page you can set the device to operate in "modem-only" mode.