Switch support on RC2?

RouterOS General
1

Can anyone elaborate on :

*) added switch support for rb1xx;

on RC2?

2

AFAIK there is an embedded L2 Ethernet Switch inside the Infineon SOC/CPU on RB100 series.

Sounds like MT have added support for it. Will be interesting to see what it does -

[Edit] Infineon shortform datasheet here:
http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/channel.html?channel=ff80808112ab681d0112ab68d6500057
http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/services/download.html?filename=%2fdgdl%2fADM5120_pb.pdf%3ffolderId%3ddb3a304412b407950112b408e8c90004%26fileId%3ddb3a304412b407950112b4137be41b29&location=Products.Broadband_CPE.Router.ADM5120.DOCUMENTS.ADM5120_pb.pdf

Regards

3

good guess. exactly that

4

Not a guess - I knew it :slight_smile:

What users will need to guess, “how to use the feature” …

Regards

5

I tinkered with it for just a few minutes but the first thing I noticed is that there is no way to see how much traffic is going through the switched ports. I’m sure there is a way to receive this info from the Infineon processor

I also noticed that this switch feature does not replace or act like bridging to mikrotik. for example if ether2 and ether3 are switched to ether1. If I plug another mikrotik into ether3 and assign it an IP of 10.1.1.1/24 and add the IP of 10.1.1.2/24 to ether2 or ether3 the two ip’s would not be able to ping each other. I’m only able to add/asign ip’s on the master switch interface.

I’m sure this is the intended operation but I think once an interface is added to a switch it should be marked as disabled or it’s status changed so that you know not to add ip’s, pppoe servers, dhcp servers, etc to the slave switch interfaces..

I did do some speed tests and I was able to send ~87mbit UDP through the switch at ~10% cpu utilization on a RB133..

-Gerard

6

I might be blind today, but can’t see any settings for the switch.
Where do you find them?

  • Winbox?
  • CLI?

BTW, 87Mbps UDP through a L2 hardware switch isn’t full line rate - I’d expect to see a bit more - like 97Mbps. Maybe there’s some reason for this - depends if ROS is having to do processing that adds any latency.
Agreed, I bet they can get the per-port packet counters out of the switch fabric, with some time/effort.

Thanks all for feedback so far - very interesting feature, could make ROS far more flexible/powerful in some applications.

Regards

7

It’s available in Winbox under the Ethernet interfaces..
mikrotik_133_switch_config.jpg
I didn’t do a real test to see what the MAX would be.. I only tested to my core router through my existing lan that has other traffic on it..

I’m certain it would perform better if tested properly.. I don’t feel like rewiring everything right now.. Our Mikrotik order for rb333’s should be here any minute now and I’m ready to test a dual nstream link to see what speeds a single rb333 on each side is capable of..

I wish it were available on the 532’s. I have several towers where I have multiple 532’s in a single enclosure. Would eliminate the need for an extra switch..

-Gerard

8

suppose, there is no STP features?

9

I got additional information from the support about this switch feature:

  1. it is working only on RB100 series

  2. in the moment you specify “master-port” option for an interface, interface stop working as a interface - all addresses, VPN interfaces from that interface should be invalid (same like when you add interface to bonding interface), I think there will be specific flag in the next version that symbolize that interface is “slave”

  3. there are no way to get data how much traffic is going thought the bridge chip - chip simple have no support for it

  4. it is possible to assign only specific bandwidth limitations to interface - full list is possible see in the winbox drop-down menu (but different chips have different combinations, so some of the limitations might not work.