RouterOS as simple switch using bridge or master port

RouterOS General
1

I have been testing and can not find difference between those configurations.
I prepare a switch using both aproaches and find that behaviour is same, looking packets with wireshark.
I was expecting that bridge mode generate more arp traffic over the network since it would behave similar to a hub but it didn`t.
Can some one go a littel deeper on this ?
After get it clear I will need to set rapid spanning tree.
Regards.
Leandro.

2

Ports in same switch chip in master/slave mode won’t use CPU to reach wirespeed, as everything is managed by the switch chip.

Ports in a bridge = switch by software, uses router CPU. Ports in a bridge can be filtered by firewall.

It also impacts Fastpath operation. Have a look at this presentation for more details.

3

Adding to the information Pukkita gave-

The hardware switch (master/slave) doesn’t do spanning tree (as far as I know - I could be wrong)
You can’t use ip firewall / bridge firewall rules to filter switch traffic.
Switch can only forward at layer2 between ports using the same switch chip. On a 2011-series routerboard, for instance, ether1-ether5 are switch1 and ether6-ether10 are switch2. You must use CPU bridge to link these two switches into a single broadcast domain. (wire speed between 2-5, and wire speed between 6-10, but cpu speed between 3 and 9, for instance). WiFi must be bridged with CPU bridge.

In a nutshell = hardware switch is the fastest, but has the fewest features.

4

Thanks !!! your replyes were very usefull.
Leandro.

5

Thanks Zerobyte! Very helpful

6

are vlans proccesed in the cpu or in the switch chip directly ?

7

VLANs can be handled at both the switch chip and the CPU. The switch chips are VLAN-aware so you can support multiple logical switches on a single piece of hardware. To route between VLANs, though, you have to make the CPU aware of the VLANs and set up an address on each VLAN at the CPU.