I’ve finally decided to drop some ethernet ports in a couple of rooms in my house in order to have wired access there. Currently the ISP’s cable feeds into my office where my Motorola SBG6580 modem/router is located. That device has four gigabit ports on the back of it. I’m going to plug a cable into one of those ports and then plug the other end of it into a Microtik 260GS switch. Three cables will come out of that first switch leading to one existing port in the sitting room, an Ooma device, and a WD TV Live media player. Another cable will run from the SBG6580 to a second 26GS switch into which I will plug a second media player and a Roku. A third cable will run from the SBG6580 to a 951G-2HnD to which I will hardwire a laptop, wirelessly connect a printer, and occasionally wirelessly connect other laptops. The fourth cable out of the SBG6580 will run straight to the computer in my office for internet access.
Is there anything special I need to be aware of as to settings on the different devices to make certain everything works well together and in order to avoid conflicts? I think I have a handle on everything although the MikroTik software (and hardware) is new to me.
Better to turn the modem into transparent bridge mode and use your 951g as router. You would get many options to drive your network and may happen that you find some reason for using vlans. Then the smart switches can take their place.
Thanks jarda. I may do that later when I have had a little more time to study RouterOS and SwOS. Right now I just want to get everything working the way I proposed above. I ran the first leg of my network tonight and connected the 951G-2HnD in the library. The cable from the SBG6580 plugs into it and then I am running a cable from the 951G-2HnD to my laptop and broadcasting a wireless signal. I can connect to the internet wired and wirelessly but I cannot see any devices on my LAN. Is this because I need to change the IP address of the 951G-2HnD to be in the same domain range as everything else on the network? Right now the 951G-2HnD is still on the default settings.
Bridge all interfaces of 951g into one bridge, put mac of ether1 as administrative address of the bridge and set DHCP client on that bridge. It will get ip from your main router as any other device and will pass all traffic thru like a switch. If it will be slow, set master interface ether1 to all other ethernets and remove them from bridge keeping just ether1 and wlan to be part of bridge.
I think I understand what you are talking about but is there a page in the wiki or a tutorial anywhere that goes into a little more detail (preferably with screenshots) in a step by step fashion?
And when you say delete the config that was there before, are you talking about the default config because I haven’t done anything to the device. Many thanks.
I don’t know about such webpage. You can read documentation about all terms you don’t understand enough. Removing config means also removing the default settings because otherwise you cannot be sure what is set around that affects your goals.
Jarda is right - the problem is that the Mikrotik is a router, so your laptop’s discovery attempts do not see devices on the rest of your network. Doing this as a bridge is the easiest solution (again, as he said).
The default configuration of a Mikrotik will let you do this easily with only a small modification:
Disable DHCP server on LAN bridge. (IP > DHCP Server > Disable)
Then you can go into IP DHCP Client, Add, choose interface = LAN bridge, and you’re set.
Finally, you will connect the Mikrotik to your cablemodem router using the lan-ethernet ports, and not the WAN ethernet port. (leave that one unused - and you can easily go back to being a router again by moving the cable back and un-doing the changes I gave here)
I am happy to relate that all is working well across my networks–WAN and LAN! I changed the security profiles on the Webfig login and the wireless network and things appear to be fine–not a single hiccough!
I left RouterOS at 6.15. I’ll update it later.
One question, on the the Security Profiles tab there is a tickbox next to Management protection. What is that exactly and should I enable it?