My experience with transparent layer 2 bridges is that they forward packets between interfaces and get out of the way. I can't find instructions on setting up a simple wireless bridge between two RB411s. The wiki instructions all use additional protocols like WDS, EoIP, MPLS, and others. Are these necessary? Is my understanding over simplified?
I want a simple wireless bridge to connect a PC to a wired network like this:
remote PC <--ethernet--> RB411/XR9 <---wireless---> RB411/XR9 <--ethernet--> Network switch
(remote radio is "station" and local radio is "bridge"
I want the radio interfaces to function transparently as a bridge (wlan1 to wlan1), so I setup one device as "bridge" and the other apparently needs to be setup as "station" to connect. I then created network bridges in both routerboards to bridge ether1 and wlan1. The wlan interfaces do not have IP addresses assigned and the ether1 interfaces have IP addresses assigned as 10.10.10.1 and 10.10.10.2.
This configuration is passing some traffic because WinBox can see both routerboards when running from either side. But it does not appear to be sending all the packets as a transparent layer 2 bridge should. For example, arp -a on the remote PC only shows the local radio, not the remote radio, and I cannot ping across the link from either direction.
Can someone offer some insight please?
Thanks,
Wayne Sherman