[Bridge] problem with bridge on soho router, when lan interface down, all go down

[Douglas Chen]

>The bridge disables by port, each port is a network device. If the network devices
>correctly implement carrier, then it can work with some down and some up.
>It sounds like either they are all coming on one device, or the device driver is
>buggy.

Thanks for your speedy reply!! Much appreciated ..

Before I dive in and start digging the source code, I want to confirm something.
I am not too well versed on STP and bridge yet.  Pardon me if this sounds weird or funny.

1. If STP is disabled, do these blocking/learning/forwarding... states still matter?
I guess I need to keep the bridge constantly in the forwarding states.  Any suggestions?

2. I also went back and read the spec one more time.  It seems that the switch (LAN) interface uses a special tagging mode similar to 802.1Q to identify the port numbers.  It is used for IGMP snooping and can be used by other applications as well.  But I guess, the current bridge code doesn't support this?  Or does it at least support the normal tagging mode?  Sorry if this doesn't make any sense.

Thanks!