I recently bougt a RB750G with the intention to use it as a L3 switch with my home VMware ESX server.
I’m having a hard time establishing a trunk interface to the ESX server and testing it.
What I’ve done is remove 2 ports from the switch group ( eth3 and eth5) eth5 is the trunk port while eth3 will be used to test connectivity to each vlan over the trunk (ie I’ll change the vlan on port 3 to test each on on the trunk)
I’m trying to add vlan 10 and 12 to the trunk port (eth5) and vlan 10 to eth3.
As I understand it I need to create a bridge basically for each physical interface and add the interface itself + 2 appropriate vlans to it ?
To test from a pc connected to eth3 the bridge should contain the interface and vlan 10 right ? (I believe I read that this will untag traffic leaving eth3 and tag traffic entering it ?)
The documentation in the wiki is terrible - I hope someone can shed some light on how this works with Mikrotik (I only speak Cisco )
You cannot have a bridge with a VLAN and the physical port the VLAN is on. So that will likely be your first problem.
You can bridge multiple VLANs together, however when you do this, you MUST specify the horizon option, otherwise it all breaks down. http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:MPLSVPLS#Split_horizon_bridging
You can try to do the same thing with a bridge filter, but the horizon option is much cleaner and easier to use.
A MikroTik is not a switch, it is a router. Each VLAN that you add to an interface is it’s own separate routed interface.
Thanks alot for your tips - is it impossible so use the switch chip to create a Trunk interface without adding L3 interfaces ? I realise this in a L3 device but I had the impression that the switch chip offered added features like a managed switch.
I want to ‘trunk’ 2 vlans to a virtual machine - and have the VM act as the router between them.
I’ve never used the switch chip, so I’m not sure of it’s functionality or how to really use it. But Fewi is right, you would be much better served getting a decent managed switch if you want the features of a switch. A used Cisco 2950 would take care of everything you needed and can be had for about the same price as a 450.
Well most people myself included dont want a powerhungy and noisy Catalyst switch at home - that why I bought 2 RB750G’s instead
If it’s impossiple to create pure L2 trunk then I’ll do it on L3 and live with the lower throughput - I’d like some clarification on whether it’s possible or not though
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