I have used RB1200 routers in the past and am in the process of upgrading to the CloudCore CCR1016-12g. My question is whether all of the CCR’s Ethernet ports are switched or if I have to bridge them. For my RB1200, I had to create a bridge group and put the ports that I want to be switched in that group. I’m hoping that I won’t have to do this on the CCR1016. It’s a pain to manage that bridge, and I don’t understand why the ports aren’t switched by default.
Does anyone know if the Ethernet ports on the CCR’s are switched out of the box or if a bridge group is necessary for devices connected to the Ethernet ports to communicate with one another?
Do you have any idea why that’s the case? It doesn’t make sense to me that all of the ports on the router wouldn’t naturally be switched by default. And a software bridge works, but isn’t a very elegant (or efficient) workaround.
It’s a router, it routes. If it switched, it would be a switch.
This may seem a little flippant, but that’s generally the way it is with higher end routers.
I understand that, but a $30 Netgear router manages to route and switch, so I’m having trouble figuring out why Mikrotik doesn’t do that out of the box. Some of their equipment (like the RB1200) has a switch chip that switches the first 5 ports. Others (like the RB2011) have two switch chips, so ports 1-5 can switch with one another and ports 6-10 can switch with one another. But you’d have to create a software bridge to get the 1-5 switch group to switch with the 6-10 switch group. I don’t understand the login behind these options. Either way, it sounds like that’s just how it is, so it looks like I’m stuck with software bridges for now.
