I was changing my vlan setup to let the switch chip to do all the hard word instead of the cpu. This is working great but it left me with some questions.
To get my wifi connected to the switch you need to connect a cpu port to the switch. This port will be connected to the interface that is the master interface on the switch. But there are 3 cpu ports to the switch. In the case of the rb2011 I can think of 2 (1 for each switch chip) to be useful where is the third for and the rb951 only has one switch chip where are the other two for.
And does the cpu port share its speed with the master interface of the chip or does it has its own connection since the switch chip does support 7 ports.
http://i.mt.lv/routerboard/files/Block-RB2011.pdf That doesn’t explain where the 3rd cpu port is coming from. But might answer your question about whether the speed is shared.
i think the AR9344 has actually 2 GBit interfaces but in the RB2011 only one is used to connect the gbit switch
I’ve mailed mikrotik and they had some very detailed answers thanx for that mikrotik!
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To get my wifi connected to the switch you need to connect a cpu port to
the switch. This port will be connected to the interface that is the master
interface on the switch. But there are 3 cpu ports to the switch. In the
case of the rb2011 I can think of 2 (1 for each switch chip) to be useful
where is the third for and the rb951 only has one switch chip where are the
other two for.
There are redundant options in some Winbox switch menus to cover all present and
future RouterBoards. The actual switch ports are listed in “/interface ethernet
switch port” menu and using the non-existent port will make an error message
appear. We may fix it later.
And does the cpu port share its speed with the master interface of the chip
or does it has its own connection since the switch chip does support 7
ports.
If it has its own connection to the switch would it be an idea to put the
cpu port in the interface list? It would make the configuration a bit more
convenient.
Switch CPU ports are independent, they do not share speed with master-interface.
Since they are only switch related, it was decided to show them only in switch
menu, to avoid misunderstanding for those who do not use any switch features.
Statistics for CPU ports are available only in CLI:
/interface ethernet switch port print stats
Looking at the block diagram of the rb2011 I don’t think its possible but
is it possible connect the wifi directly to the switch chip?
No, it is not possible. Only way to create such connection is bridging WLAN
interface with master-interface.
Some more on the cpu and master port:
From hardware point of view the master-port (physical ethernet port) and cpu port
are completely independent. But when ports are switched in a group you can see cpu
port traffic when sniffer is running on master-port interface, it is like you were
running sniffer on “switch-cpu” port. The real traffic on ethernet port which is
master-port stays in switch-chip.
I could also explain it like mapping between names. When eth8 is master-port,
RouterOS knows that eth8 is not actually directly reachable and VLAN interfaces on
eth8 are like VLAN interfaces on “switch-cpu” port.
Basically, in every menu other than “/interface ethernet switch” ethernet
interface which is master-port works as switch-cpu interface. And slave ports are
not reachable directly at all.