DSL router when what I need is a bridge; ARP problem?

[Gary Aitken]

   Grrr....
   My only choice for a DSL isp will only do G.lite in routing mode, not
   bridging.
   So...  I want the dsl modem to essentially act as a bridge, feeding
   into one ethernet card on my freebsd box via a crossed cat5 cable, and
   the freebsd box handling routing and other duties for hosts connected
   to a hub on another ethernet card.  I *thought* this was going to be
   simple...
     dsl line <---> Cisco 678 <-ed0-> freebsd <-de0-> local host
   I naively picked up a Cisco 678 thinking it would do the trick.
   However, even with CBOS 2.4.7 installed, it won't route out the
   ethernet port -- only out the wan port.  e.g., if the routing tables
   in the cisco look like this:
cbos#show route
  ip           mask                   gateway      type  interface
0.0.0.0        0.0.0.0                a.b.c.d      DSAR  wan0-0
<router-ip>    <255.255.255.252>      <freebsd-ip> LAR   eth0
<local-lan-ip> <255.255.255.248>      <freebsd-ip> SAR   eth0

   The router can ping anything on the local lan, sending its request and
   receiving its reply via the freebsd box; but if anything on the local
   lan other than the directly connected freebsd box pings the router,
   the router receives the ping but isn't smart enough to route the reply
   back.  Not exactly a very smart routing algorithm.  Instead, it sends
   out an ARP request on ed0 trying to discover the
   ethernet address for the local lan host which is on de0; it receives
   no reply, since the host is on the de0 lan on the other side of the
   freebsd box.  I'm not sure what the SAR type means (or DSAR  and LAR
   for that matter).
   From the arp man page, it seems like an arp -s entry should be
   automatically made in the freebsd box's arp cache as a result of the
   freebsd box knowing about the hosts on the local lan, and it should
   respond to the request from the router by sending its own (proxy)
   ethernet address, and then forward the packet out the other side.
   However, this doesn't happen.  A dump of the arp tables shows only the
   entry needed for routing on the local net, with no addresses
   published.
   If I manually add the ethernet address of the machine on the local net
   to the freebsd arp table using
     arp -s <local host name> <local host ethernet addr> pub only
   then the freebsd box does respond to the arp request from the router,
   but sends the ethernet address of the local host on de0, rather than
   that of its own interface on ed0, to the router.  The router then puts
   the ping (icmp) reply onto the wire to the freebsd box (ed0), but it
   is never picked up because it is addressed at the ethernet level to
   the local host on the other side (de0).
   On the other hand, if I add the ethernet address of the freebsd box
   interface to the router (ed0) as the published entry for the local
   host, the routing tables get generally bolluxed up, including
   notifications to the local host that its ethernet address is now
   different.  This appears to be because the arp entry is made for the
   inside local network on de0, rather than for the ethernet line running
   to the router on ed0.  The arp command appears to have no ability to
   specify which interface the published address is for.
   Can anyone shed some light on this?  Is this a bug or a feature, or am
   I just messed up and not doing it right?
   And finally... can anyone suggest a different dsl modem which will
   route properly, and which can accept vpi/vci pairs like (0,100)?  I'm
   told the Cisco 827H will deal with the vpi/vci pair (The Cisco 678
   will only take a vci in the range [0..63], but I don't have a lot of
   faith that it will route any better without info from someone who has
   direct experience with it.
   And, yes, I would like to shoot the bozo at my isp who set their stuff
   up, but he's moved on to wreck havoc at yet another installation.
   Gary