LAN IP is at ether2 while bridge with ether2 and wlan is configured

RouterOS General
1

I’m doing config audit for several way-back set up and configured devices (mostly 951’s), I noticed that most of them has the same config portion, which looks like default config done by that time:

/interface wireless set [ find default-name=wlan1 ] band=2ghz-b/g/n channel-width=20/40mhz-Ce disabled=false...
...
/interface ethernet
set [ find default-name=ether1 ] name=ether1-gateway
set [ find default-name=ether2 ] name=ether2-master-local
set [ find default-name=ether3 ] master-port=ether2-master-local name=ether3-slave-local
...
/interface bridge port
add bridge=bridge-local interface=ether2-master-local
add bridge=bridge-local interface=wlan1
...
/ip address add address=10.10.10.1/24 comment="default configuration" interface=ether2-master-local network=10.10.10.0

(I’ve changed the look a bit to fit it into code preview window here).

That is, the LAN ip (which is the default gateway for devices on its LAN) is set up on ether2, which, in turn, put into bridge with wlan, and clients on wlan are working fine.

This is something I don’t like to see (I used to set up IP address on bridge itself), but these routers isn’t looks like to be set up in a sophisticated way so looks like this approach was the default one (= out of box) by that time.

So the question is: the setup is working fine, so if I should change it and set IP on bridge, instead of ether2? Like this:

/ip address
add address=10.10.10.1/24 comment="default configuration" interface=bridge-local network=10.10.10.0

The change is easy, but actually I’d like to know if there is any difference in terms of speed or CPU load or in network problems for me to have reason to touch this. If not, then I can leave it as is, just for the simple idea it worked for years (with different ROS versions, by the way), so the setup looks like stable one.

2

if you create a bridge and set bridge port like bridge1-wlan1 bridge1-eher2-master
you should change the ip interface from ether2 to bridge1 , if you dont do that , the network will be stop

i try it in rb952 , you must change the interface=bridge1

and why your routerboard still work ,ok i dont know

3

Yes, this is what I knew for years, and doing it in other way was not right and won’t work sometimes.
But this time I really wonder how this setup still work, and how this can be as it looks like this is done via standart initial config wizard.

Looks like device run packets back and forth from/to ether<->bridge just to do generic routing/nat operations, but… lucky users won’t notice anything (the WAN links are thin, yes, so no problem on CPU side).

Still would like to know for sure!