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deltabravo191
New Contributor

Placement of Transparent Device Question

Hey! I have a question regarding the placement of a Fortigate in transparent mode on a network: Everywhere I see, it is showing the device between the router and the switch. Would it be possible to place it between the modem and the router? My main concern is the management IP. Would I need to assign a static IP from my ISP to make this work? Or could I just put it on a private subnet not being used on the internal Network (similar to how arris surfboard devices use transparent bridging and put a management interface at 192.168.100.1 despite them being beyond the router)? I appreciate your time, thank you!
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og1
New Contributor

I too would like to understand this placement of the Fortigate transparent mode device between the router (gateway to the Internet) and the model device. It's an important question and I don't see it addressed in the Fortigate documentation, though it would seem to be a legitimate configuration.  I understand the IP configuration settings on the router and also the Fortigate would need to be adjusted from the "standard transparent mode" setup.  I've looked throughout the forum and documentation for this following configuration to apply transparent model and don't see it anywhere.:

 

Private Wired LAN and/or Private Wifi LAN (different subnets)->Gateway/Router (wifi access point on router using different subnets from wired LAN)->Fortigate (transparent mode)->Public Internet/Router  

 

The reason this configuration would benefit my application for the FortiWifi device I have in transparent mode significantly is that all my wired LANs and Wifi LANs coming int the current router would then go through the Fortigate in transparent mode, instead of just the one wired LAN (as it is right now.  I have been unable to get the FortiWifi wireless LANs to work properly with transparent mode, so I just configured the physical LAN interface). 

 

I don't want to do NAT on the Fortigate device.  I just want it in transparent mode for the app control feature.

 

If someone that has successfully implemented this "Private Wired LAN and/or Private Wifi LAN->Gateway/Router->Fortigate (transparent mode)->Public Internet/Router" configuration and could share their experiences and tips to set it up, it would be greatly appreciated.

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