PtP bridging, bridge - station-bridge vs station-wds

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hi,

I have one question. We’re testing something and have following basic configuration:

PC1—Groove1 ---- Groove2----PC2

Interfaces on Groove are bridged and to achieve L2 bridging Groove1 is set to: bridge mode and Groove2 to: station-bridge mode.
I see a lot of people configuring bridge mode - station-wds. What is the benefit of station-wds over station-bridge in such configuration? Throughput? Stability?

Also, are there any drawbacks if both Grooves would be in bridge mode, bridge - bridge? You can also connect and have L2 connectivity and communication between PCs…

WDS Limits
2

Also, are there any drawbacks if both Grooves would be in bridge mode, bridge - bridge? You can also connect and have L2 connectivity and communication between PCs…

Sorry, my bad I see now that if you put bridge mode on both Grooves, scan for networks and connect to network, that Groove on which you connected automatically goes to pure station mode without station bridge which I don’t want to.

So I have only the doubt about station bridge vs station wds…

3

station-wds is used for true bridging because of shortcomings in the 802.11 protocol. I’d recommend this one between two lans.
station-bridge is used for bridging a single computer behind a mikrotik cpe radio. It’s limited by the protocols that it will successfully bridge and how many lan side computers that it can support.

4

Tnx for the effort. What shortcomings in 802.11 protocol, what if nv2 is used, not 802.11? Is there still same reason?

I see in wiki for station-bridge:

In this mode AP maintains forwarding table with information on what MAC addresses are reachable over which station device.

Is this the reason for not connecting LANs? Too many MAC addresses? This shouldn’t be a problem.


But there is also this sentence in the wiki for station-bridge:

This mode is safe to use for L2 bridging and > should be used whenever there are sufficient reasons to not use station-wds > mode.

So it seams station-wds is truly better, but then I’m interested what could be sufficient reasons not to use it? In what situation this could happen?