Should the optical modem be switched to bridge or not? I took all the benefits, and the cost was to make all three families fall into trouble
Last month,
cousin bought a second-hand four-speaker Synology car, excitedly installed it, and took out his phone to call home while spinning. He asked me: How can your NAS connect? I said, 'Just one step closer, your fiber modem is dialing up, mine is dialing on the router.' That's the only difference—there's just a wall between us. This step is converting the optical modem into a bridge. This feature has been hyped up on the Tieba for over ten years, but I don't recommend everyone blindly follow it. My family changed it for three years, was forced to use loopback routing mode for a while, and even watched three friends' homes fail after the modification. Today, we've settled that all accounts at once.
clarify first: the difference between routing mode and bridge mode is who is doing the work
installer defaults to router mode: the optical modem does all the work by itself—dialing, sending IPs to all family devices, address forwarding, and even sending two WiFi channels. If you plug in your own router, it actually becomes a 'wired' mode, commonly called AP mode. You can get online, but the AX3000T you spent hundreds of yuan on is doing the work of a thirty yuan expander.
bridge mode is the opposite: the optical modem only keeps one capability—converting the optical signal from the fiber into electrical signals, and doing nothing else. The dialing work is left to the router, which gets the broadband account and calls it by itself, acting as the family's main butler.
to clarify a misconception: changing the bridge doesn't mean replacing the optical modem or changing a single cable; you just go to the backend and switch the internet connection from router to bridge—it's all five minutes. The default route retention mode isn't a rip-off; it's easier to manage—remote configuration distribution and troubleshooting all refer to this model. Switching to bridging means confiscating the technician's remote control, and all the costs behind it come down to this.
how do you see what kind of family you are now? No need to guess, just log in to the router's backend and check the IP address on the WAN port status page. There are three appearances: starting with 100.64, with the carrier's main layer in front, which is the most congested; 192.168 or starting with 10 means the optical modem is dialing up and the router is just a lower-level device; public website address , you know without me having to say it. I wrote about the tricks in the router dial-up settings , so I won't repeat it here. My current setup is the ZTE F7015T bridge, which only switches to light, AX3000T dial-up for the whole family.
Four things you can get from
Bridge Modification
first, public IPs finally have a place to shine. I called 10,000 before to get my public IP back, and in optical modem routing modem, you still have to map it to the modem, which is troublesome and depends on the super modem's attitude. After switching to bridge, the router is directly exposed on the public port, and remote NAS connection goes from 'spinning' to a stable direct connection just over 10MB/s. How to check this process should be written in the article on checking public networks IP.
second item, port forwarding is only configured at one layer. in optical modem router mode, if you want to access a device at home, you first need to set up a mapping in the optical modem super admin backend, then set one in the router backend. Both ends have to be activated, and missing one won't get in—I wrote about this in the Tianyi gateway port mapping for this reason. After bridging, the optical modem layer disappears instantly; just install it once on the router.
third item: with one less NAT layer, both gaming and home flow smoothly. PS5 multiplayer players are sensitive to NAT types. Double-layer NAT is basically a strict NAT3 mode, and switching to bridging to eliminate one layer is the most effective remedy. It's the same when connecting home from outside. I run WireGuard on the router, and with one click, my phone connects home to drag files. The premise for this route is that the router can be reached from outside. VPN the article on the home has three comparison routes.
fourth, bring the power and control back to your own router. the hardware of the daylight modem, you can get ten or eight units with a built-in device. I've tested the old problem of disconnecting at midnight after more than modem. the built-in WiFi is enough, there's a question in that article. Switch to bridge: who goes online, speed limits, and when your child disconnects — all set in the background of your router, without having to struggle with ITMS menus.
cost is real: when I was forced to use retrace routing mode, I saw the truth about it
list all the benefits, don't rush to act. I've already paid half of the tuition."
The first
was ITMS pushed back to in the middle of the night. On the very first night after upgrading my bridge, I was caught in the scheme: the night before, I tested 940Mbps, but in the early morning, the telecom remote network management platform quietly switched the settings back to routing mode, and the WiFi name was restored to the default version starting with ChinaNet. During that period, I was basically forced to use loop routing mode. The NAS remotely crashed for almost half a month, but only after figuring out its temperament did I stabilize. The whole response was written in the ITMS push back article.
second is IPTV to just quit . The optical modem switched to bridge connected to the WAN connection table, and the IPTV record was the most likely to suffer. On the night of the change, TV blackouts were common. The night I rescued it, I tried all three routes and recorded all the after the bridge, IPTV had no signal. If the elderly at home have the TV on seven or eight hours a day, think carefully about this before making changes.
third, the backend of the light modem can't access . After bridging, the optical modem stopped sending IPs, and the computer's address was not on the same subnet. At 192.168.2.1, contact was lost. The modem alone isn't broken or locked, and a static IP can get in. But people who don't know this trick probably think the cat is useless and find a way back to the backend I've written about it separately. By the way, the WAN line with 'VOICE' on the surface is the lifeline of a landline. Don't touch it when bridging, and the phone port the article explained why.
there's another unofficial issue: the caliber when reporting for repairs. If the line fails, call 10000. When the technician arrives and sees the cat is a bridge, some will ask you to switch back to the routing mode before checking again. After a while, it's gone. Last winter, when my friend's house lost power due to light failure, the first thing the technician said was, 'Why is your cat a bridge?' The two argued for a long time about who had changed it, and the investigation took ten minutes. It's not a big deal, but no one at home will make a mess, and that's a real problem.
my seating chart: four types of people should blindly fix it, three types should avoid touching it
| your family's situation | should you | a single sentence for your reason |
| NAS, surveillance, and remote connections when you're away | you have to close your eyes and change | or not—these are basically decorations |
| playing games on foreign servers, If you care about NAT type | close your eyes and switch to | a layer of NAT is the most suitable |
| router is gigabit port, 256MB of RAM, and | just close your eyes to change it | Hardware can support dialing work |
| someone at home will come in the backend to mess around | if something goes wrong | someone will cover |
| IPTV serious issues, Elderly people have their TVs on all day | don't touch them | one black screen is enough to handle |
| routers are old models with 100 Mbps ports | don't touch them | Weak dialing performance actually slows down |
| FTTR the main optical modem (fiber to the room) | don't touch it | The whole house depends on it for the optical modem, so it can't be touched |
not mentioned in the table, for example, families who just scroll videos on their phones and tablets—if you can't notice how to change it, don't mess with it. Why can't the FTTR structure be changed? the article on FTTR is very detailed. Also, for those who need to connect two routers, first check the optical modem with two routers attached below then decide which one to use. Don't dial both at once and it might conflict.
you regret it after the changes, there's a backup plan: use the super controller to go to the background and reconnect the WAN to routing mode, or simply reset it to factory settings, wait for ITMS to automatically send out the standard configuration in the middle of the night, and then go back to how it was built the next morning. The first one is clean, the second is easier, but if you play the factory reset card, reset WiFi names, bridges, and port mappings to zero. Before you start, copy what needs to be copied first.
If you really want to change, I'll arrange the steps for you
thought it through carefully and decided to change it. Following this order, don't skip a single step:
| what steps | what | why |
| Step 1 | export the optical modem configuration file and save it on your computer | Changing it is the only regret remedy. download conf backup follow the instructions |
| second | take a screenshot of the entire WAN connection meter | IPTV VLANs and landline VOICE on it—rely on it for emergencies |
| Step 3 | obtain the telecomadmin super admin password | useradmin can't change it, the super secret the right way |
| Step 4 | modify the bridge, fill in the broadband account and dial-up on the router | and the details of these three steps are in the Chaomi article |
| Step 5 | Set a static IP to check the optical modem backend on your computer | confirm the change was successful, and conveniently copy the light deterioration to the backend. Here's the way to access the backend |
| Step Six | Having three consecutive nights of re-examination is the hardest to say whether you'll be pushed back to the | ITMS temper during the first three days |
in the end, it comes down to one thing: Bridge is designed for families whose routers are better than optical modems and have remote needs. If your fiber modem and TV are working fine, this feature has nothing to do with you—don't change it just for the sake of it. If you really have a NAS to connect or games to play, complete all six steps above and that wall will collapse.
