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Simonej
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VLAN on switch chip without Bridge

Mon Nov 28, 2022 5:09 pm

Hello, I'm in the process of configure two VLANs on a wAP AC, if I understood how VLAN should work in MikroTIk;

- New devices with Hardware Offloaded Bridge VLAN Filtering -> https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ ... witchchips in order to avoid CPU load.

- New devices like hAP AC2/3 or wAP AC -> https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ ... switchchip with vlan-id to
/interface ethernet switch
instead of Bridge, otherwise CPU resources are used.

Now if this is correct, could someone explain the utility of adding a Bridge and the interfaces in the second case? Should work also without.
/interface bridge port
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether1
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether2
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether3
Thanks
 
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mkx
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Re: VLAN on switch chip without Bridge

Mon Nov 28, 2022 9:23 pm

If you want to use ethernet ports as a group of switched ports, then you have to configure bridge and add relevant ports. And that's true in all cases. It doesn't work without it.
The difference between switch-chip way and bridge-way (both software and HW-offloaded) is that for the later one has to set vlan-filtering property of bridge to "yes" and for the former to "no". And, of course, set the rest of L2 VLAN settings in appropriate place.
 
Simonej
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Re: VLAN on switch chip without Bridge

Mon Nov 28, 2022 9:57 pm

Understood, thanks!
I was fooled by the fact that hAP has only 1 or 2 ports and it worked for me without any bridge, but not sure it was offloaded.
 
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mkx
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Re: VLAN on switch chip without Bridge

Mon Nov 28, 2022 10:09 pm

There are 2 things when it comes to VLANs:
  1. passing frames between different ports within same VLAN.
    Almist all MT devices, which have switch chips built in, can HW offload this, either automatically (bridge config) or by manual configuration (switch chip config)
  2. interaction of RouterOS with devices in certain VLANs
    This includes wireless traffic as well. In this case vast majority of work gets done by CPU and not much can be actually offloaded to switch chip. The difference between offloaded and non-offloaded is negligible.

Not sure what kind of use case you are mentioning in your last post.
 
Simonej
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Re: VLAN on switch chip without Bridge

Tue Nov 29, 2022 12:51 am

Interesting, thanks again for sharing the detailed explanation.
In my personal case I have an RB4011 with couple of VLANs configured as standard bridge-way and an wAP LTE (without wireless active) as second WAN using the second example switch-way without bridge.

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