Functional differences in bridging and master/slave ports

RouterOS General
1

I realize the obvious differences between using a bridge and master/slave ports, but can someone elaborate on what is functionally different, and where you would use one over the other? Turned on some new 450s and it struck me that 2-5 are always slaved, and that I didn’t know why.


Thanks!

2

Master/slave uses the switch chip, so it never touches the CPU and you are able to get wirespeed between the ports. You have very little to no control over the traffic going between the ports.

Bridging uses software to link the ports together, it allows you more fine grained control over the interfaces, like setting up firewall between them. The main downside is that since it uses the CPU and software, there is no way of getting wirespeed between the ports.