I have just bought a Draytek Vigor 120 as I now have ADSL2+. This is to be used with my Cisco RV220W Small Buisness Router.

I want to be able to view the status of the line whilst the modem is bridged, but I don't want to use the suggested method of using two ports on the router.

i.e. Modem > Router LAN, Router LAN > Router WAN

This is bad practice in my experience as it exposes the LAN directly to the internet bypassing the firewall.

Would putting a switch inbetween the modem and router accomplish the samething. I could then assign a staic IP addressto my laptop, connect it to the switch and access the vigor 120's pages.

Would there be any conflicts doing this, any degradation in internet connection speed.

Any advice would be appreciated.

TLE01

I also noticed there is a small 4 pin socket on one side of the modem, any ideas as to what this is for?

TLE01 wrote:
i.e. Modem > Router LAN, Router LAN > Router WAN

This is bad practice in my experience as it exposes the LAN directly to the internet bypassing the firewall.

Not in my experience of running that configuration, the router firewall is still doing it's job and blocking ports as expected.