ProCurve 1810 - IP addressing

[itlk]

Hi,

I have a router provided by the ISP. The router has just one Ethernet port. Behind this router is HP ProCurve 1810 switch, with two firewalls connected to the switch.

Within the switch, the router and firewalls are on the same VLAN. The outside port of the 1st firewall uses DHCP to get the IP address; the 2nd firewall uses a static IP address.

I would have few questions:

1/

How is working the Procurve switch, when a new VLAN is created? It seems that I can assign the IP address or DHCP to the management VLAN only. If a new (without management access) VLAN is created on the switch, the new VLAN has just an ID and no IP settings are required.

In my setup, it seems that all ports on the non-management VLAN (the router, firewall 1, fireall2) have the same IP.

All setup is working properly, I don’t have any address conflicts, but I am not sure if this setup is really OK.

2/

My second question is if it is OK to have the Procurve switch in front of the firewall and behind the transparent (?) ISP router . I need the switch just to split the internet traffic to two separate firewalls (networks), so it should be no big deal that it is in an unprotected segment of the network. But still it somehow doesn’t feel right.

3/

If I connect the pc directly to the router, the PC will have a public IP address. So I am not sure how this router works, I would expect the router to provide private address. Can it be that the router provided by the ISP,  is working in a transparent mode?

Thanks for suggestions.

P.S. This thread has been moved from Switching > Comware-Based to Web and Unmanaged - Hp Forum Moderator