I’d like to use the E60iUGS router (HEX S 2025) in my home network. The WAN port will be connected to a Quantum Fiber C5500 NID/Modem configured to run in Bridge mode. I am on Quantum Fiber’s 940 Mbps down/up plan and do not foresee going to their 2Gbps/1Gbps down/up plan. I have two Netgear GS3108EP 8-port 1Gbps managed POE+ output (802.3af/at) switches.
I want to reassign ETH1 on the E60iUGS from a WAN port to a LAN port so I can power the E60iUGS from one of the Netgear switches over POE AND provide the LAN interface to the switch from the E60iUGS ETH1. I want to reassign ETH4 to be the WAN port. I will use ETH2 as is to provide the LAN interface to the other Netgear switch.
Can RouterOS reconfigure ETH1 to use the internal switch chip for the LAN interface and ETH4 to use the CPU for the WAN interface?
Any recommendations, concerns, or caveats?
Thank you.
Have a look at the block diagram
Those are physical properties that cannot be changed.
You can move ports between interface lists etc, but cant change which attach to the switch chip, cpu or poe
While @eltikpad is correct that which ports are connected to the switch chip and which ones directly to the cpu cannot be changed, however the logical layout can be freely configured. You are free to configure ether4 as the wan port and use ether1 as a lan port.
@lurker888 is correct, I wasn’t very clear in the end.
AFAIK the only downside to having ETH1 in the LAN bridge would be some CPU impact from using software bridging for this traffic.
@eltikpad @lurker888
Thank you for your replies!
I will most likely reconfigure ETH1 to be a LAN port and ETH4 to be the WAN port as stated earlier.
To reduce CPU utilization, I will connect my four 100Mbps devices to one of the Netgear 8-port switches. I will connect the ETH1 reconfigured LAN port to the same Netgear switch to take advantage of the POE port to power the E60iUGS.
I will connect my five 1Gbps devices to the other Netgear 8-port switch and connect the ETH2 LAN port to that same Netgear switch.
Finally, I will connect the reconfigured ETH4 WAN port to the C5500 NID/Modem which has a 1Gbps WAN port.
Hopefully, the CPU utilization will be moderate with the above configuration.
Please let me know if the above configuration makes sense.
Again, thank you.
That sounds like a good plan. For routed packets (those that are from/to the Internet,) this configuration doesn’t result in measurable performance impact. For packets between your two switches, roughly 1/3 of the CPU load will be present compared to a packet to/from the Internet. Grouping devices that have lower bandwidth needs makes sense.
In order to reassign the ports you’ll have to:
- change bridge→ports (remove ether4, add ether1)
- change interface lists (change WAN from ether1 to ether4)
- change the DHCP client (from ether1 to ether4)
- +1: always disable detect internet
