bridge mode on Netgear wireless router WGR614

One of my former colleagues had an issue with his Airtel broadband, wireless and his laptop - every time the power failed, he had to connect his laptop to the DSL modem directly, "repair" the connection, then connect the wireless router and so on. Airtel tech support asked him to reinstall network interface drivers on his laptop. That seemed to work - the wired network now worked without the need for "repair". Then he wanted to add the wireless router into the mix, and it appeared that disabling DHCP was the way to go. So he assigned ip addresses in the same sub-net to the DSL router's LAN interface, the Netgear's LAN interface and to the laptop's wireless interface. He was able to ping the wireless router, but not the DSL modem. Then he changed the port on which the DSL router was connected to the wireless router - initially it was connected to the "uplink" port, now he connected it to one of the "normal" 4 LAN ports on the Netgear. Now everything works. It seems this is the way to do "bridge-mode" (as against NATing) on the Netgear WGR614 - googling brought up this page which links to the Netgear KB article.