I am trying to bridge ether1 and wlan1 but it doesn’t seem to work. The final goal is to bridge networks that reside on ether1, wlan1 and wlan2 all in one class C network. Can this be done using RouterOS without WDS? Is this type of bridging supported?
Yes it can be done.
If any of the wireless interfaces is a client, you will have to enable ‘station pseudobridge’ instead of ‘station’ mode. Put all the interfaces in a bridge, assign appropriate ip to the bridge and you’re good to go.
What if no interfaces are in a client mode and want this to be the central ap-bridge wifi? I was trying to put all interfaces under one bridge but it doesn’t seem to work.
There shouldn’t be a problem. Create bridge, add ports, assign ip to bridge. Where is your wan in all of this?
Let’s have a pictorial of your intended network layout.
I did exactly as you said but not everything worked. I maybe missing some kind of parameter as I am pretty new to RouterOS. Here comes the hard part that doesn’t work:
(Network)—(Bridge)—(Aironet UC4800)—(Remote PC)
I am trying to replace quite a few remote points like the above (its a bit more complicated than the above layout but that is the basic setup) and while I can ping everywhere from the Aironet (which means wifi connection works OK), the remote PC packets are getting cut off by the RouterOS Bridge. If I replace the Bridge with a BR500/350 series of bridges/access points or even use other CF-OSes instead of RouterOS, everything is working as it should. Am I missing something here or RouterOS bridges things differently?
Hah not this problem again 
Just use WDS or EoIP tunnel + bridge. Thats the RouterOS way. What other OSes did you use with CF ?
IkarusOS does a pretty good job at this. A couple of other BRs/APs work also as expected. Actually just about any BR/AP I have tested (Linksys, Cisco, D-Link) worked as expected except RouterOS. WDS is not an option here as it is not supported by other wifi devices. I am not so sure if EoIP is either if it requires both sides to have RouterOS running, but I will look into it as I am not familiar with it yet. If its gre tunneling like then it will most likely require both ends to have RouterOS so thats not an option either. RouterOS seems to have a lot of capabilities and I would really be surprised if it is not capable of handling something as simple as an interface bridging itself!
It seems MT Devs make miracles every day at the price of some feature falling far behind. Maybe they had to optimize the code and make it more stable so they removed this kind of bridging and have had more important work to do ever since so it never made it back into the production branch …
MikroTik, why .. ?
I am not so sure about those miracles you are talking about. The official answer of MT support is:
“we haven’t received any complains about such problems. Your device was configured as a Bridge so it is working as a bridge.”
so according to MT this is not a “known” problem and the RouterOS is bridging!!! WOW!!! I guess I have to assume also it is as you say, they have better things and miracles to do than bother with a simple bridging… and since this is first time they have heart of such problem, they are unfamiliar with it. Hmmmmmmmm.
I don’t get your point. What should have happened instead? It’s working as configured apparently.
Should it not bridge packets from the remote PC?
Miracles or not, but you need to follow standards, when developing software like this. and it is clearly stated that wireless clients (stations) can’t be bridged. only Access point can be putted in to the bridge without any problems.
Thank you for the reply, macgaiver, so we must run both sides as “ap bridge” (or what?) to achieve layer2 bridging amongsht them? There is a way to do it without WDS or EoIP?
@macgaiver: I am no standards expert BUT I find it extremely hard to believe that only MT follows the standards while ALL other companies I have tested so far, are not!!!
But even if that is the case, and MT follows the standards while all the rest are not (for me it actually IS a standard just because all others use it), how hard can it be to simply offer what every other company does and bridge every packet in 2 or more interfaces of the same device? All the solutions so far are based on 2 RouterOS devices and therefore none of them are acceptable for what I want to do. I am looking for a solution with ONLY ONE device that is configured as an access point and/or bridge and act as a dumb hub with its own interfaces. It doesn’t really get any simpler than that. The only almost working solution to this is in your forums and comes from NathanA: http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/wds-and-dfs/8129/1 The problem is that there is no dynamic way to accomplish the same thing and that is a big problem with many clients like that around.
this is disturbing.
Mikrotik likes to strip out features of protocols, so this might be the case with this as is with L2TP IP-SEC and OpenVPN UDP.
But in the instances that it’s not, can you post a screenshot or config dump of the bridge and each interface that is in the bridge.
Also, the other CF oses you have tried, have they used the same hardware, just diff cf cards?