Ok, I freely admit routing is not my strong point (I’m the radio guy..)
I have bought a (cheap) 4-port Ethernet Router Card A-3905 based on the Realtek 8139 chip.
It is recognised fine by MT 2.9.44 and works. When I put it in my MT box the Reatek 8139 driver is loaded.
But what confuses me totally is the fact is shows up in the interface list as ONE ETHERNET port.
After a while I realised I could assign multiple IPs to the card and it would route itself.
However we also have another MT router on our network with a 4-port card (I think a RB 44) - and this shows up as 4 ethernet ports. Is there any way I can get this (clone/generic) router card to show up as 4 ethernet ports?
It is not a big issue now I have realised it is essentially a router inside the MT router - and provided I assign the IPs correctly, it will route to which ever of the 4 ports is appropriate. However it IS confusing, and I would appreciate your comments..
Ok, thanks, I thought that might just be the case.
The picture you have very kindly included is very similar to my card.
The RB 44 has 4 nic chips on it so shows up as 4 interfaces, yes?
But - can you confirm (as my routing knowledge is not brilliant) I am correct when I say I can assign 4 IPs (or more if I need) to the card, and plug in 4 devices to each of the 4 ports and the card does the routing for me as it has a switch on board?
=====================================
I can confirm I have 3 IPs already assigned to the card and 2 devices connected, and data seems to be routed correctly..
It is just a little confusing, but I suppose if you take the cheap route you have to accept this.
PS EDIT - if this routes ok as it seems to, what is the DISADVANTAGE in using this, compared to the RB 44 - which shows up as 4 ethernet interfaces?
Ah, ok, as I said I wondered what the disadvantage was…
I am using 2, maybe 3 of the interfaces and the speed on each interface will certainly not exceed 1/3 of 100 Mbits/s - as they are connected to either dsl or WiFi backhaul links. DSL at a maximum of 7 MBits/s, and WiFi at 14 MBits/s.
So prioviding the routing works ok (which is what I am worried about) I can live with a theoretical loss in speed.
they are not limited that way - i said 1/3 will be if they are used to the max. if you do not see the need for so high speeds that do not bother about that, because, if one link uses 1Mbps then on all the other you have more than 80Mbps for sure
you can check how much data is flowing through that interface, if that is not reaching the limits - you do not have to worry about, just remember, that when you face some speed problems you know where to look
Since it’s a switch on that NIC, you don’t need to worry about the speed between the computers connected to it, only the traffic through the MikroTik router. Each port in the switch has a dedicated 200 Mbps channel, 100 Mbps upstream and 100 Mbps downstream.
Hmmm, thanks again.
But as I said earlier, I am using this card at low speeds (adsl backhaul, WLan backhaul) - up to 20 or 30 MBits/s max..
The only concern I have is one ‘ethernet’ port is shown in my MT box - but I want to be sure it routes to the correct interface..
Ie I assign 192.168.2.10 and 192.168.0.10 to the card, plug in two separate devices with ip 192.168.2.1 and 192.168.0.1 and the correct data is routed to the correct ports. I can see this happening so it appears fine but would appreciate someone confirming this for a relative routing novice.
PS Re the 100 Mbits/s per port, that is what it implies on the box …
How many ethernet card on one PC supported by mikrotik ?
I just tried configuring 5 ethernet on my PC but the system only detect 4 interface.
I’m using 2.9.6 version
