How to offload to Switch chip? Is it on by default? (CR326)

RouterOS General
1

I don’t understand Switch chip functionality well, or more precisely - how to turn it on.

Is it, by any chance, turned on by default now? I am just configuring some CR326 switches in ROS mode, and would very much like to get maximum switching speed from them.

2

Every bridge is supposed to be hw-offload capable. Whether that happens depends on two things:

  • is HW offload on member port enabled or not? That’s a setting on each port in /interface bridge port and default setting is hw=yes
  • is HW offload possible? That depends on particular setup and RB type. HW offload is obviously available only for ether ports (e.g. devices with wlan interfaces won’t ever see HW offload active on wlan ports).
    Most of RB devices don’t support HW offload when using vlan-filtering on bridge. CRS3xx is supposed to be exception here, it should have HW offload active even with bridge vlan-filtering enabled..
    You can check actual state of HW offloading using command /interface bridge port print … in the Flags section ports with HW offload active will have ‘H’ displayed.
3

Thank you very much for a nice write up, I was confused with documentation on this.

EDIT: This forum is a real saver. I spent hours reading stuff about this.