I'm trying to keep a centralized setup as I upgrade my network from a mixture of trango and smartbridges to all mikrotik based setup. I know that I can use wds to bridge interfaces but can I use the same thing to bridge wired interfaces?

My current setup

|backhaul router MT|======>trango AP---------->trango client =====>Smartbridges AP-----> out to clients, laptops, etc

=== is a wired link
----- is a wireless link

Currently clients connection to the smartbridges AP use the backhaul MT for dhcp, gateway, etc. I need to replace the smartbridges AP with a mikrotik ap and I'd like to keep using the backhaul router for control but I haven't been able to figure out how to get clients to bridge directly back. I have read about EoIP tunnels and I believe that would work for me in this case, but everything I've read indicates that this is a much slower route to take.

Long term goal is to replace the trango AP with a mikrotik which would then feed the mikrotik AP's directly --> WDS links to the various AP's and I'm good to go. But I've got 5 access points deployed running from the trango AP and I can't replace everything at once so it is going to be a phased roll-out.

I guess I know how to do this, I'm just looking for other suggestions that might work better than what I'm proposing.

Thanks,

Craig Russell