I have a tower that is running bridge mode with a pppoe server. Every now and then I have to reboot an AP or update its FW. Sometimes when I reboot one AP, all other AP’s pppoe sessions drop and then reconnect. Can anyone elaborate on why it might do this? The router is a 493G and AP’s are all UBNT rockets.
I don’t believe there are any loops preset but could this cause this behavior? Should I enable STP or RSTP on the bridge?
I’d try enabling RSTP on the bridge, and bridging devices..
It sounds like on every reboot the main bridge is having to relearn the network and rebuild its hosts table. If this is the case traffic will probably stop for a good 30 seconds after a reboot. If you enable RSTP this will significantly decrease the time (to micro/milliseconds) that it takes for the bridge to relearn the connected hosts. Be sure to use Rapid STP as STP takes just as long as a traditional 802.1d bridge to learn the connected devices.
If there were bridge loops you’d have consistant problems, not just on a reboot.
Thanks for the info. When you say enable RSTP on the bridge devices, do you mean the ubnt aps? I think the ubiquitis only do STP but i’ll double check. Is this as simple as turning it on in webbox? I don’t want to risk losing access to the tower RB. I am routed up to it on seperate interface but still want to play it safe. Its a long drive up there with angry clients calling if I lose access to it :-/
I am slowly converting my network to routed but its not a simple task 
can you post your configs… i’m not sure I completely understand how you have this device setup. Mainly just the bridge and ppp submenus.
It could be that the MAC address of the bridge is changing due to an interface going up/down, which could also explain why all PPPoE connections are lost. If the bridge’s MAC is tied to the PPPoE server and it changes then all PPPoE connections just lost the host they were trying to reach to establish/maintain the tunnel.
In this case I’d set the bridge’s MAC address to a static MAC so its not based off of what interfaces are active in the bridge.
Either way you should not lose the connection to the device (enabling RSTP or setting a static/admin MAC). From what I understand you’re connecting from the WAN side of the device which is a Public IP of some sort. So you should always be able to connect to that…but if something doesn’t go as planned be prepared to take that long drive. 
Here are the configs:
BTW nice user name. I almost feel like im talking to myself
bridge:
add admin-mac=00:00:00:00:00:00 ageing-time=5m arp=enabled auto-mac=yes \
comment="" disabled=no forward-delay=15s l2mtu=1524 max-message-age=20s \
mtu=1500 name=bridge1 priority=0x8000 protocol-mode=none \
transmit-hold-count=6
add admin-mac=00:00:00:00:00:00 ageing-time=5m arp=enabled auto-mac=yes \
comment="" disabled=no forward-delay=15s l2mtu=65535 max-message-age=20s \
mtu=1500 name=loopback priority=0x8000 protocol-mode=none \
transmit-hold-count=6
/interface bridge port
add bridge=bridge1 comment="" disabled=no edge=auto external-fdb=auto \
horizon=none interface="ether2 - Switch" path-cost=10 point-to-point=auto \
priority=0x80
add bridge=bridge1 comment="" disabled=yes edge=auto external-fdb=auto \
horizon=none interface="ether3 - To Myk BH" path-cost=10 \
point-to-point=auto priority=0x80
add bridge=bridge1 comment="" disabled=no edge=auto external-fdb=auto \
horizon=none interface="ether4" path-cost=10 \
point-to-point=auto priority=0x80
add bridge=bridge1 comment="" disabled=no edge=auto external-fdb=auto \
horizon=none interface="ether5 - IndAP" path-cost=10 \
point-to-point=auto priority=0x80
add bridge=bridge1 comment="" disabled=no edge=auto external-fdb=auto \
horizon=none interface="ether6 - SouthAP" path-cost=10 \
point-to-point=auto priority=0x80
add bridge=bridge1 comment="" disabled=no edge=auto external-fdb=auto \
horizon=none interface="ether7 - Sk-BH" path-cost=10 point-to-point=\
auto priority=0x80
add bridge=bridge1 comment="" disabled=no edge=auto external-fdb=auto \
horizon=none interface="ether8 - CarRouter" path-cost=10 \
point-to-point=auto priority=0x80
add bridge=bridge1 comment="" disabled=no edge=auto external-fdb=auto \
horizon=none interface="ether9 - Ind2AP" path-cost=10 \
point-to-point=auto priority=0x80
/interface bridge settings
set use-ip-firewall=yes use-ip-firewall-for-pppoe=yes \
use-ip-firewall-for-vlan=no
and pppoe:
add address-list="PPPoE 3.5M Service" change-tcp-mss=default comment=\
"" local-address=96.xx.xxx.254 name="PPPoE 3.5M Service" \
only-one=default remote-address="PPPoE Public IP's" \
use-compression=default use-encryption=yes use-vj-compression=default
add change-tcp-mss=default comment="" local-address=10.202.1.2 name=\
"Tower Internet Access" only-one=default rate-limit=768k/768k \
use-compression=no use-encryption=yes use-vj-compression=no
add address-list="PPPoE 2.5M Service" change-tcp-mss=default comment=\
"" local-address=96.xx.xxx.254 name="PPPoE 2.5M Service" \
only-one=default remote-address="PPPoE Public IP's" \
use-compression=default use-encryption=yes use-vj-compression=default
add address-list="PPPoE 7M Service" change-tcp-mss=default comment="" \
local-address=96.xx.xxx.254 name="PPPoE 7M Service" only-one=\
default remote-address="PPPoE Public IP's" use-compression=\
default use-encryption=yes use-vj-compression=default
add address-list="PPPoE 10M Service" change-tcp-mss=default comment=\
"" local-address=96.xx.xxx.254 name="PPPoE 10M Service" only-one=\
default remote-address="PPPoE Public IP's" use-compression=\
default use-encryption=yes use-vj-compression=default
add address-list=LakeTamarisk change-tcp-mss=default comment="" \
local-address=96.xx.xxx.254 name=LakeTamarisk only-one=default \
use-compression=default use-encryption=yes use-vj-compression=default
add address-list="PPPoE 3.5M Service" change-tcp-mss=default comment=\
"" local-address=10.202.1.2 name="NoVPN 3M" only-one=default \
remote-address="Local Non VPN IPs" use-compression=default \
use-encryption=yes use-vj-compression=default
add address-list="PPPoE 6.5M Service" change-tcp-mss=default comment=\
"" local-address=96.xx.xxx.254 name="PPPoE Business 6.5M Service" \
only-one=default remote-address="PPPoE Public IP's" \
use-compression=default use-encryption=yes use-vj-compression=default
add address-list="PPPoE 15M Service" change-tcp-mss=default comment="" \
local-address=96.xx.xxx.254 name="PPPoE 15M Service" only-one=default \
remote-address="PPPoE Public IP's" use-compression=default \
use-encryption=yes use-vj-compression=default
set default-encryption change-tcp-mss=yes comment="" name=default-encryption \
only-one=default use-compression=default use-encryption=yes \
use-vj-compression=default
/ppp aaa
set accounting=yes interim-update=0s use-radius=no
And your PPPoE Server is listening on bridge1 ?
Try setting your Bridge’s MAC statically…
If the current mac is 00:11:22:AA:BB:CC set it statically to 02:11:22:AA:BB:CC.
This will keep the Bridge’s MAC from changing if the port on the bridge goes down from which it obtained its MAC address. I’d start there and see if that fixes your issue with disconnects when an AP is rebooted.
You can enable RSTP if you so choose, I have it on my networks as it speeds up the bridge learn state from ~30seconds to milliseconds. It also has some loop prevention benefits.