Ok so I am a bit new to Mikrotik came from cisco first then went pfsense for a while.
I am now setting up a new Mikrotik router and it is telling me to set up a bridge first thing, this just makes absolutely no sense to me as I thought the point of a bridge was to link different networking equipment together?
Not just to create a dhcp network, the documentation doesn’t say why it wants to do this and it is driving me crazy cause I don’t think I need to.
Depends on what part of documentation you are referring to … and what you are trying to do.
For most users, it will be one of the first things to do.
Link of documentation you are referring to, please ?
And what is the context of the configuration you are trying to setup ? A small drawing perhaps ?
The default setup from MT is a safe setup for a non-ROS user to plug WAN1/ETHER1 to the ethernet and use ports ether2-5 for internet access.
Beyond that, better start learning quick!!
The bridge construct is central to this default setting for many reasons.
If one wants to branch out so to speak you can assign different IPs/subnets to the etherports and remove those etherports from the bridge.
Any combination of ports on bridge or ports off bridge etc.. and as Pe1chi points out, each port separate and no bridge! or on some routers with two switch chips, two bridges LOL
Then if you run out of ports you can assign vlans to the bridge and remove the bridge from any dhcp responsibility.
The vlans can be assigned in any mix you want, trunk, access, hybrid to the etherports ( or wlans if a a wifi capable router )
Very flexible and it works.
If you dont like it go back to pfsense
You do not need to create a bridge when you are using only a single port for your dhcp network (e.g. when you connect it to a switch).
The bridge is a software-switch that is used to connect more than one ethernet port together to form the internal network.
In most situations this software-switch is then hardware-offloaded into actual switch hardware, but that is invisible to the user.
If you are coming from *sense then, to put it in a pretty basic way, MikroTik is the inverse in two respects. Using *sense on FreeBSD it is generally advised to avoid bridging on the router, because the CPU does all of the work. Most installations are on basic x64 hardware with no switch chip. On the other hand, such boxes tend to have plenty of memory and storage often used to add a variety of services including some CPU/RAM-hungry IDS/IPS systems. In contrast, Mikrotik comes with quite svelte levels of CPU, RAM and storage but with the addition of a dedicated switch chip, not to mention on-board WiFi. Mikrotik is highly efficient at those things it targets. Try setting up reliable multiple virtual WiFi nets on *sense on Chinese hardware… (I’ll wait). The bridge is an important off-loading mechanism where multiple interfaces are in a common sub-net. If you do not need that there is no requirement to set up the bridge. Look at the block diagrams – even small devices have switch chips.
I have both OPNsense and Mikrotik in my network.
Thank you all for the information.
I was pretty sure I knew what the bridge was and I had a rough Idea thanks for the explanations.
And to answer the first question I meant the first part of the getting started with ROS guide I just didn’t understand why they had you set up a bridge first thing without explaining why this was needed it just did not compute thank you all I gotta go change some things now haha.
In case it was not clear yet: the bridge is not between internet and your local network. It is between the ports that you assign to your local network, usually all ports you do not use for internet or other purposes, and the WiFi interfaces (if any).
In the current version of RouterOS it is like the user view of a switch (there still is a switch menu but for most purposes you should not touch that).