why is 'bridge' interface replaced with 'ether2-master' in 'address list' regardless if there is pppoe connected or not

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hi,
First of all: I don’t have any issue, and I am connected well to the internet via my MikroTik router wirelessly or with a wired cable. However, I am respectfully requesting you to read my post and enlighten me to hold a grip in the network.

Secondly: Since I don’t have any dialup modem, and I only have TP-Link Modem/Router, then I rest the TP-Link to its default configuration to be functioned as a transparent mode. Then, I used a two-head Ethernet cable to be plugged from one of its ends to LAN port on the TP-Link, and the other one end to the Ether1 on the MikroTik router RB2011UiAS-2Hnd. There are no other Ethernet cables connected. When I checked the address list via the Winbox while pppoe was not configured, there are two interfaces: ‘bridge’ and ‘ether1’ shown in the address list.(screen shot below)
pppoe not configured, there are two interfaces ‘ether1’ and ‘bridge’ :::
pppoe not configured, there are two interfaces 'ether1' and 'bridge'.JPG
However, once the pppoe was configured, but there was no ip address assigned to the pppoe since my internet account was out of credit, then the interface ‘bridge’ was replaced with ‘ether2-master’. However, the interface ‘ether1’ was removed/unshown.(screen shot below)
pppoe configured, but no ip address assigned, then ‘bridge’ replaced with ‘ether2-master’, ‘ether1’ was removed ::
pppoe configured, but no ip address assigned, then 'bridge' replaced with 'ether2-master', 'ether1' was removed.JPG
However, when the pppoe was connected and there was ip address ,134.35.89.156, assigned to it, then the interface ‘bridge’ was replaced with ‘ether2-master’. However, the interface ‘ether1’ was replaced with ‘pppoe-out1’(screen shot below)
When pppoe configured, ip address assigned, then ‘bridge’replaced with ‘ether2-master’, ‘ether1’ replace with’pppoe-out1’:::
When pppoe configured, ip address assigned, then 'bridge'replaced with 'ether2-master', 'ether1' replace with'pppoe-out1'.JPG
Moreover: when I checked the interface section on the MikroTik router board screen, I found:
While pope is not configured, or configured but is not connected since the internet was out of credit (no ip address assigned to pppoe), I found that the interface ‘ether1’ is assigned with an ip address, which is 192.168.1.100/24, and its status is ‘link-OK’, rate is '100Mbps. However, the interface ‘ether2-master’ wasn’t assigned with any ip address, and its status is ‘link-no’ and ‘rate’ ‘unknown’.
However, When pppoe is connected and assigned with an ip address 134.35.89.156, I checked the MikroTik router board screen, then I found the interface ‘ether1’ was not assigned with any ip address in ‘addresses’, and its status is still ‘link-OK’, ‘rate’ is 100kbps. However, '‘ether2-master’ was assigned with an ip address as: ‘192.168.88.1/24’. But its ‘status’ stayed ‘link-no’ and ‘rate’ ‘unknown’

As a result, and according to my details above,

1- when the pppoe is not configured at all(router is in its default configuration), why are there only two interfaces ‘ether1’ and ‘bridge’ in the address list in the Winbox?

2- When pppoe was configured, but no ip address assigned, then why was the interface ‘bridge’ replaced with ‘ether2-master’, and’ether1’ was removed/unshown, no longer exits?

3- When pppoe configured, and ip address assigned, then why was ‘bridge’ replaced with ‘ether2-master’, and the ‘ether1’ replaced with’pppoe-out1’?

4- In the interface of MikrTik routerbaord screen, why was the interface ‘ether1’ assigned with an ip address(192.168.1.100/24), but ‘ether2-master’ wasn’t while pppoe is not configured or configured but no ip address assigned to pppoe? However, once the pppoe was assigned with an ip address, 134.35.89.156, then the interface ‘ether1’ had no ip address, however, ‘ether2-master’ had an ip address,‘192.168.88.1/24’, although its status is still ‘link-no’, rate is unknown’?

2

Could anyone please at this splendid forum take some of his precious time out to reply to my points posted in my very first post?
I don’t want more in-depth information. However, it is enough to give me the beginning of the way/line.

3

The ether2-master is the master switch port that connects to the bridge. The bridge is only necessary to connect the master switch port ether2-master to the wireless, otherwise wireless would be on a different network than wired. Because ether2-master is linked to bridge, the IP address can be assigned to either bridge or ether2-master and it should still work. Other things like DHCP servers etc do not work in this case if they are not associated with the bridge - the IP address is an exception.

When you use PPPoE, a virtual PPPoE interface receives the IP address instead of the physical ether1 interface. The physical ether1 interface becomes a transport for layer 2 PPPoE frames. It does not need to have an IP address as a result.

The behavior you are describing should not cause an issue.

Essentially, the way it works is you have a hardware switch:

      ether2-master
    /       |        \
  ether3  ether4  ether5

Then you are connecting that hardware switch to a software switch called bridge:

            bridge
           /      \
  ether2-master  wlan1

I know it is not entirely consistent that the “Quick Set” assigns the internal address to ether2-master instead of bridge. I am not sure what the reason for this is, but it should not cause an issue. As long as other functions like DHCP server are associated with the bridge, everything should work as expected. If you are really bothered by the inconsistency, simply edit the address entry and associate it with bridge instead of ether2-master. It won’t break anything, but using quickset again might change it back on you.

4

Thanks a lot,
If you have checked my screen shots posted again, you will see, in the IP> addresses> address list in the Winbox, that the interface called a ‘bridge’ is only available while pppoe is not configured(the MikroTik router is reset to its default configurations), So, there are two interfaces ‘ether1’ and ‘bridge’ . However, when pppoe is configured, there is no ip address assigned to it or even there is an ipp dddress assigned to pppoe, then the interface ‘bridge’ became ‘ether2-master’


Moreover, I have MikroTik router RB2011UiAS-2Hnd. There are 5 Ethernet ports(ether1, ether2-master, ether3, ether4, ehter5), ether-6master, ehter7, ethr8, eth9, ether10.
So, my router has two master switch port, ether2-master, and ether6-master.

I don’t have any separated hardware switch. So, you mean with “I have a hardware switch” with my MikroTik router “RB2011UiAS-2Hnd” has built-in hardware switch port???

5

Yes, I didn’t know what model it was, but essentially you have two hardware switches inside. You can choose which ports are switched and which are not. That is what master and slave settings do. ether2-master would be the master for 2-5, and ether6-master would be the master for 6-10. Essentially, you have two hardware switches set up, and are not including one port in any switch (ether1). So on your unit, it is like you have an external switch plugged into ether2-master, with 4 ports (ether2, ether3, ether4, ether5) and a second external switch plugged into ether6-master, with 5 ports (ether6, ether7, ether8, ether9, ether10). Although which ports are switched (and which port is the master) is configured via software, they are hardware switches, since hardware chips are doing the switching rather than MikroTik software.

These hardware switches are then grouped together with the wireless interface into the bridge, which is a software-based switch; this switch provides layer 2 connectivity between your ether2-master hardware switch, your ether6-master hardware switch, and your wlan1 interface.

‘bridge’ will be there even when PPPoE is not configured. It will simply not have an address. If you go into “interfaces” or “bridge”, you should see it there even when PPPoE is not configured.

Because bridge is always there and is always connected to ether2-master, in either configuration, it doesn’t really matter whether the IP address is assigned to bridge or ether2-master, since they are linked.

The address list only shows you what interfaces currently have an address assigned, it does not show you all your interfaces. This is an important distinction - do not take the fact that ‘bridge’ doesn’t have an IP address to mean that it doesn’t exist.

What is confusing you is that MikroTik QuickSet is not being consistent in where they apply the internal address. Sometimes they apply the address to ether2-master, sometimes they apply it to bridge, with no rhyme or reason - but in both cases, it doesn’t actually matter, it works either way. Because in both cases, you do have both ether2-master and bridge, and ether2-master is connected to bridge in both cases, so you can have the address on either one (or even on ether6-master or wlan1 if you wanted) and it would still work.

Basically you have a bridge named ‘bridge’ and in this bridge you have 3 ports:

  • ether2-master
  • ether6-master
  • wlan1

The IP address can be assigned to ‘bridge’ and because it is bridged, that IP address will essentially be also assigned to ether2-master, ether6-master, and wlan1.
You could move the IP address from bridge to ether2-master and it would still work. You could move the IP address to ether6-master and it would still work. You could move the IP address to wlan1 and it would still work. The four interfaces (‘bridge’ itself, ether2-master, ether6-master, and wlan1) are essentially interchangeable as far as the IP address goes because they are all connected to that bridge.

6

Thanks a lot,
Spot on ‘you could move the IP address from bridge to ether2-master and it would still work…’
If you have a look at my screen shots posted before, you would only see that ether2-master only has IP address while pppoe is connected and assigned with ip address. So, how to move the IP address from bridge to ether2-master ?(i.e. while pppoe is assigned with an IP address, then only ether2-master is assigned with an IP address. However, the ‘bridge’ don’t have any filed of ‘IP address’. So, how to move the IP address from bridge to ether2-master if there is no IP address assigned to ‘bridge’ )

7

Double-click on the IP address in the address list, it will open up a pop-up window where there is a drop-down list of interfaces where you can select which interface that IP address is attached to.

8

Beware. Once the configuration is touched out of quickset (and your config is) do not use quickset for any reason further. Never more.

9

Thanks a lot,
You meant that if I had moved the 192.168.88.1/24 to be attached to 'ether2-master, ether6-master or wlan1, it would still work. I will NOT mess the configurations?
ether2-master, ether6-master, and wlan1 are all connected to the same bridge..JPG
Secondly: why the other address assigned to pppoe-out1 cannot be attached to another interface other than pppoe-out1?

Finally: why do I see that in the interface that ‘pppoe-out’, ‘wlan’, and ‘sfp’ are numbered. (pppoe-out1, wlan1, sfp1), although there are no others of ‘pppoe-out, wlan, and sfp’?

10

Correct, you should find that the 192.168.88.1/24 can be associated with either bridge, ether2-master, ether6-master, or wlan1, and the operation of the router should be unaffected. I would change it back afterwards so that quickset will not get confused.

The PPPoE address is dynamic. You can see the letter ‘D’ beside it showing you it is dynamic. You cannot edit a dynamic address or move it to another interface. The 192.168.88.1/24 is static so you can do what you like with it.

That is just the MikroTik default naming: if you have 2 wlan interfaces, think about what naming you would prefer (‘wlan’, ‘wlan2’) vs what MikroTik does (‘wlan1’,‘wlan2’), or with your Ethernet interfaces for instance it would seem especially silly to leave the ‘1’ off the first Ethernet port and just call it ‘ether’. Also, you can create multiple PPPoE connections on the same router and then you would have more than one pppoe-out interface. On some routers they have PCIe connections to add a second wlan interface.

Also, you are free to rename interfaces as you like on MikroTik. If you would rather your pppoe-out, wlan, and sfp interfaces not have the 1 on the end you can remove the 1 easily. The only thing this might break is quickset, because it will expect the default names to be there.

11

Thanks a lot,
I am sorry if I took the thread to multi topics.

Firstly: You suggest if I’d changed the 192.168.88.1/24 from the bridge 'ether2-master to be associated with either bridge, ether6-master, or wlan1, then I would change it to ether2-master so that quickset will not get confused. Why do you think that quickset would be affected?


Secondly: You said that I can “create multiple PPPoE connections”. If I had more than one internet cable(more ADSL subscriptions), how to create multiple PPPoE connections. There is only one Ether1(POE) on my MikroTik router to which my internet cable is connected. However, my LAN devices can be connected to the ports 2- 10 (ether2- ether10).

Thirdly: do you think that my router has PCIe connections to add a second wlan interface. My MikroTik router model is:RB2011UiAS-2HnD and SN:5201041c04/442
Finally: There is a strange port located in the back rear interface of my MikroTik beside the power port It looks like LAN port. What is that port for?

12

  1. QuickSet is like a series of config templates, but it doesn’t keep track of which one you are using; instead it tries to figure out which one you have based upon your settings. It also assumes that you haven’t changed any settings outside of quickset. If your settings differ too much from what quickset expects to see, it can guess wrong.

  2. It is possible to reconfigure interfaces as additional WAN connections by removing them from the switch. Then you could have an additional ADSL modem plugged into another interface and configure a second PPPoE client through PPP->Interface->(+) button to add interface->PPPoE Client

  3. I don’t know if your router has a PCIe connection for such an interface.

  4. I’m not familiar enough with the device you are using, but the strange port is probably a console port, which is a serial port for out of band management. It uses a cable like this http://www.routerswholesale.com/images/72-3382-01-large.jpg which plugs into the serial port on your computer; you can then use a terminal program to log into the router via command line. It is primarily useful in the event that you lock yourself out of the router with a change (ex. you create a firewall rule that blocks all your access to the device) and want to log in to fix it without having to reset the device.

13

Great explanations, mducharme.

I would like to add one point to the topic where an IP address will work whether it is applied to a bridge interface or to one of its port interfaces.
(i.e. putting the IP on ‘bridge’ vs. putting it on ‘ether2-master’ ‘ether6-master’ or ‘wlan1’)

I would say that while it may work on one of the port interfaces, it’s better practice to always use the bridge interface itself, since that is actually the point where the Mikrotik itself is “connected” into the bridged network. If you create any interface-based firewall input/output rules for the Mikrotik, then you will need to specify the bridge interface in those rules - and it would be confusing to be using ‘bridge’ interface for the rules, but not have any IP address configured on that interface…

Basically, it’s a good habit to get into.
(I’m sure you know this very well, mducharme, but I just wanted to point this out for networking beginners)

14

Thanks a lot, ZeroBye,
May I understand from your saying ’ it’s better practice to always use the bridge interface itself…’ that it is better to change IP address “192.168.88.1/24” from the port interface ‘ether2-master’ to be applied to the bridge interface itself(the bridge interface itself is the first interface named with ‘bridge defconf’ in the drop-down menu of interfaces in my screenshot posted before) instead of to one of its port interfaces, ether2-master, ether6-master, and wlan? If correct, then why did quickset not apply the bridge interface itself to the ip address when I setup the ‘pppoe’ via quickset’, however, Quickset applied the port interface ‘ether2-master’ to the ip address by default?

15

Just remember that Mikrotik is one of those insanely flexible systems that allows you to do the same thing in several different ways. I guess that plus the wide variety of system types leads to some configurations coming out of Quickset that don’t quite match up with what a human might do.

For instance, a hEX router only has one switch chip and no wireless interfaces. It doesn’t make any since to use a soft bridge as the LAN interface for the typical 1-wan/4-lan port layout. Without a bridge, the master interface is where the LAN configurations go. However, on a 951 series router, there is also a wlan interface, and if you want the wifi to be on the same network as the 4x lan interfaces, then there must be a soft bridge, and that’s where the LAN configuration should go.

Me, I played around with Quickset when it first came out, and found that it was quite prone to going off the rails if I did anything to the configuration in the normal (non-quickset) menus. I still liked the wireless dashboard, so I’d go there occasionally, but I have accidentally clicked a couple of things that overwrote my configuration with something totally screwed up - therefore I never go into quickset anymore, so I really can’t speak to when it will use ether2-master or when it will use bridge1 as the LAN interface, and I definitely can’t speak as to why it would do so.

16

Thanks a lot,
Could you please enlighten me about the DHCP server range in my router model RB2011UiAS-2Hnd?
1- I always see that DHCP server range is 192.168.88.10-192.168.88.254, although even if there are many wireless clients are connected to my router.
DHCP Server Range.JPG
2- I am expecting that this DHCP sever range would limit the number of online wireless clients to be connected to my router via hotspot. I am right, aren’t I? if I had used the hotspot(I.e. giving a user name and PW to each Wireless client want to connect to my router, then the number of user names would be limited through ‘192.168.88.10’ and ‘192.168.88.254’, So, I would only have a certain limit of ips to be used/assigned to wireless clients via hotspot, do you know how many online clients could be connected to my router via hotspot?

3- I am expecting the DHCP server range(192.168.88.10-192.168.88.254) is limited by the ip address(192.168.88.10) applied/assigned to interface port ‘ether2-master’, and the ip address(192.168.88.254) associated/assigned to my wireless client(my notebook wireless ).

4- why is always the ip address 192.168.88.254 assigned to my notebook wireless(i.e. while my notebook is connected wirelessly to router, then I see in the wireless clients that last ip is 192.168.88.254?

17

Yes, by default, you would be limited to the DHCP range in clients, so you could have 244 clients in total, wireless and wired combined. You can have more if you change the subnet mask to something larger (like a /23 instead of a /24). Then you could have 500 or so. You could increase it even more, 1000, 2000, 4000, 65000… but eventually your router is going to hit a CPU limit because it can’t handle so many.

Often DHCP tries to assign the same address to the same client if it is available.

18

Thanks a lot,
1- Since the ip address applied/assigned to interface port ‘ether2-master’ is (192.168.88.10), and the ip address associated/assigned to my wireless client(my notebook wireless) is 192.168.88.254.
I am expecting the DHCP server range is surrounded by the ip address assigned to the interface port ‘ether2-master’ and the ip address assigned to first connected client which is my notebook wireless client. So, DHCP is surrounded by (192.168.88.10-192.168.88.254)


Often DHCP tries to assign the same address to the same client if it is available.

Even if there are other Wireless clients connected to my router before my notebook wireless got connected to the router, then the DHCP would assign the same ip address to my notebook wireless client despite its later connection.

Finally: I am now not using any hotspot configurations. So, you agree with me that DHCP server range would limit the number of online clients would be connected to my router while using the hotspot. If so, could you please let me know what is the related between the hotspot and DHCP server range. And I am respectfully requesting you to give the begging steps of configuring the hotspot(a user name and PW to be given to a client willing to connect to my router.

19

This is the second time you have stated that, but there is no question there. You are telling me information - now you are repeating it again. Is that a question somehow?

Yes.. it would try to, as long as the address was not taken by anybody else in the meantime, in which case it would get a different address.

Go into IP->Hotspot and click Hotspot Setup. That starts a wizard which leads you through everything - it couldn’t be much easier.

20

Thanks a lot,
Yes, there is a question which is I want to know if the DHCP server range is surrounded/limited by the IP address assigned to the first client to be connected and the ip address assigned to the interface port ‘ether2-master’ since I noticed that DHCP server range is (192.168.88.10-192.168.88.254), and the ip address applied/assigned to interface port ‘ether2-master’ is (192.168.88.10) and the ip address assigned to the wireless client, which is (my notebook wireless), is 192.168.88.254.