Bridge mode performance question

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

hi all,
Simple question: on RB2011UiAS I have 5x Gigabit and 5 10/100 ports.i use it only as a switch and network testing tool when needed. By default I have all ports aggregated in the same bridge.it is better to group Gigabit ports in a bridge and 10/100 in a second ? What’s the performance impact in any of those configurations?
Thx

2

Doesn’t matter, bridge is in software anyway.
Performance will be bad no matter what you do.

3

why you say it will be bad?
i realy expect to have Gbit on those 5x Gbit ports. :frowning:

4

Then use switch chips and bridge only their master ports.

5

In that case you need to use the switch, with master/slave ports. Those need to be separate for the two switch chips and you can then bridge those.

6

Good. Thx alot. I’ll separate those then and see how it goes.

7

so what i did :

  • create 2 separate bridges : gigabit and fast ethernet
  • assigned all 5 gbit ports to Gigabit swith and all fast ethernet (slave ports) to the second bridge
    Now looking @ the product block diagram it seems that all 5 Gbit ports are processes by the dedicated gigabit switch chip and the other 5 by the CPU itself.
    Is there a way i can still tune the switch performance?
    On both switches can i use access ip 0.0.0.0/24 ? or should i define the specific switch access ip on both?
    thank you.
8

(1) No - you only use one bridge.

Set ether2 - ether5 as slave with ether1 as master. (switch1)
Set ether7 - ether10 as slave with ether6 as master. (switch2)
Set bridge1 with ports ether1 and ether6 (cpu)

The CPU bridge is only there to connect traffic between the two switches.

Hosts on the gigabit ports will reach each other at wire speed. (no CPU load)
Hosts on the 10/100 ports will reach each other at wire speed. (no CPU load)
Hosts on 10/100 can talk to hosts on the gigabit ports by crossing the CPU bridge - which can handle a decent amount of traffic if you’re using 1500-byte packets and no bridge firewall rules / IP firewall rules.
– note: these first two statements are true, even for devices connected to the master ports, so ether1 <> ether4 can go at wire speed without consuming CPU.

(2) No
The cpu and the ethernet controller (as well as the wireless) are built into the same die, but it is not the same as the CPU. If you were to crack open the case, it’s like there are three chips inside. Think of it like a “north bridge” chip or something - except that there is a CPU inside the same chip as well…

So even though the 10/100 controller is on the same piece of silicon as the CPU, hardware-switched traffic on the 10/100 does not consume CPU cycles.

9

Thank you for the clarification ZeroByte .
I didn’t know that.seems pretty simple. I’ll update asap i make it.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

10

Config done.
I guess this is how it should look like