I am not referring to the different mode the wireless can be set (ap bridge, bridge, station, station-wds etc etc)
No, in winbox since v 5.x?? a new field under ´wireless´ tap in the wireless interface window is found called “Bridge Mode”.
It can be either enabled or disabled although the default is ‘enabled’
Anybody that can tell me what it is. The manual give no explanation.
The manual gives an explantation!
on ap side use:
“bridge” or “ap bridge”
and bridge-mode enabled
on client side use:
“station bridge”
and bridge-mode enabled
this makes WDS unnecessary. Just put your wlan-interfaces into their corresponding bridges…
This way you can achieve full transparent bridging without WDS, EoIP or VPLS mess!
@sup5: You are right:
Mode station-bridge
This mode works only with RouterOS APs and provides support for transparent protocol-independent L2 bridging on station device. RouterOS AP accepts clients in station-bridge mode when enabled using bridge-mode parameter. In this mode AP maintains forwarding table with information on what MAC addresses are reachable over which station device.
This mode is MikroTik proprietary and can’t be used to connect other brand devices.
This mode is safe to use for L2 bridging and should be used whenever there are sufficient reasons to not use station-wds mode.
The manual has been changes a couple of times in the last year and me, an ‘oldy’ 
have difficulties finding the right documentation.
Next question coming up:
If in an ‘all MT’ network both wds or station-bridge mode can be used. Which is the best?
Also, if ‘station-bridge’ is not used (routed network) is it ok to disable the default AP setting ‘Bridge Mode’ in “disable”?
Since I always use max. one radio per routerboard, I need a transpartent bridge to do the routing in a separate Routerboard/x86.
The advantage over WDS is the easier setup and the working disabled default forwarding.
(client isolation).
Also station-bridge might gain some perfomance over WDS.
Well, just converted a bridge multi routerboard link into a sectioned routed one because the router closest to the ´central’ started to crash. All I did is connecting a new network segment at the end of a 4 units long ‘pipe’. First day is crashed every 2-3 hours, second day every 30 to 40 mins and today almost every 10 mins…
I spend all afternoon to find the problem, couldn’t find is (link was all bridged with WDS on the wireless part) and at last converted into fully routed (between each router a separate subnet! So each router also has several routing table add!) and finally brought the crashing under control… (live network, 80 clients!)
All was left a 30 min etherport flap on the ‘top’ router. I disable both side’s ‘auto negotiation’ and so far its stable now for 1,5 hours…
I’d wondered if the bridging option with the ‘station-bridge’ mode would have saved me some grey hairs here…
Anyway, what ros version do you use?
I have a mix of 5.6 and 5.7’s but 5.6 still gives me ‘port flap’ issues, where 5.7 gives me sometimes the ‘dhcp’ issue and even more severe port flap issues at times…
I have a ‘strong feeling’ the port flap has something to do with miss configured bridges or subnets somewhere in the network. Although when ports are ‘up’ all devices are reachable etc. So it is hard to find the real issue.
You state
Also station-bridge might gain some perfomance over WDS.
. Any real experiences? Or argument? If true, I might change some backhauls into this…
I’ve got no Ethernet Port-flap issues at all.
Any Ethernet-Port weirdnesses had been cabling or connectivity issues, which were easy to fix.