I was hoping someone could give me some advice as to the best way to configure the 1100AHX2 as a simple switch + router. I basically need to create a private network with as many of the ports as possible, and retain a single WAN port for optionally connecting to a host network. The Basics: 1 WAN port pulling an IP from an external DHCP server. 12 LAN ports (if possible) on a private network (192.168.1.0/24) with a DHCP server providing IP addresses to all clients. A simple roue for all internet traffic between the LAN and WAN. The easiest way to think of this is as a home broadband router, but without the wifi that all of these products have today (this will be installed in areas that Wifi may not be permitted so a COTS wifi router won’t work for me)
That’s really it. My current configuration has the WAN on ETH1 and the remaining ports all bridged. However, I’m concerned that this may not be the optimal configuration for speed. I would prefer to use ETH13 as the WAN port and free up ETH1 - 10 to use the internal switching hardware for maximum speed. The Quick Set router configuration does not seem to allow me this flexibility and I’m not 100% sure how to bridge between the two switch groups.
I’m a total beginner to network configuration but I’m hoping my needs are fairly simple.
If you have NAT (which in your case it is), the WAN traffic will HAVE to go through the processor. So you CAN reach wire speed, but probably not. Although if it is only the NAT, then you might.
It does not matter if you use Eth1 or Eth 13 for WAN.
Thank you for the reply! Most of my high-bandwidth traffic will be between devices plugged directly into the router. The WAN is mostly for convenience and may not be connected at all in some installations. So I am not giving up any performance by using the bridge to link all the LAN ports vs using the built-in switching hardware?
-Matt
Take a look at the block diagram of the RB1100AHX2: It has two switch chips (ports 1 to 5 and 6 to 10), one port direct linked to the CPU (11) and two ports going to the CPU through a PCI express bus (12 and 13). The switches are connected to the CPU trough a 1Gb link each. It means that:
You can get wirespeed between ports 1-5 and 6-10, with no CPU cost, if you keep the traffic inside the switches.
Every connection that goes to/from a switch chip and the CPU pass trough that 1Gb link in each switch, and uses CPU cycles.
It is possible to reach wirespeed in ports 11-13. But it will cost CPU cycles, since the packets must go trough the CPU.
If you are expecting really heavy traffic, and need more than 5 gigabit ports on a single LAN, it would probably be better to plug a dumb switch and use it to all the hosts.