with 532 and 564, plus five cards. can one bridge all of them together for backbone speed?

I too would like to know this one.

I would like to bridge four cards, one being the station mode, and the other three being A.P. units for clients on different channels.

I tried to create a bridge across all; does anyone know if this works?

Adam

/interface bridge add name="bridge1"

/interface bridge port add bridge=bridge1 interface=int1
/interface bridge port add bridge=bridge1 interface=int2
/interface bridge port add bridge=bridge1 interface=int3
/interface bridge port add bridge=bridge1 interface=int4
/interface bridge port add bridge=bridge1 interface=int5

regards

Adam,

do not put a wireless interface that is in station mode into a bridge. Wireless interfaces that operate in station mode can not support transparent bridging (if you need to know why this is the case, please read the IEEE 802.11 standard chapters 7.1.3.1.5 and 7.2.2-Table 4).
Every interface that is made a bridge port really should support transparent bridging. If you want to add a wireless station interface to a bridge you should use station-wds mode and add the WDS interface to the bridge instead.

--Tom

Yeah... I have that done, but Sergejs explained to me that you can't put one wlan1 is station mode, and then bridge that to the other wlan devices.

Says that you need to have the wlan1 (backhaul) in WDS mode to allow bridging to the other wlan clients for AP bridge work.

And that's why a simple bridge doesn't play across all wlan devices, when one is in station operation.

Adam

Tom,

Thank you for the reply!! That explanation has helped me a lot.

I have a question for you in regards to WDS mode of the repeater I am trying to set up:

Can I put the wlan1 (backhaul link) of the repeater into station-WDS, and expect it to connect to another RB532 back at the tower that is operating in bridge-ap mode for clients?

Can they share a connection like that, or do I need to setup another wlan card at the tower that has no other job than to speak to the new repeater using WDS?

I am trying to replace my present BriLan NMS with MikroTik, and I am discovering that there are MANY differences between the two O.S.....

And I also learned that trying to work them concurrently is a big hassle, as the hybridization is difficult to troubleshoot.

Adam

Can I put the wlan1 (backhaul link) of the repeater into station-WDS, and expect it to connect to another RB532 back at the tower that is operating in bridge-ap mode for clients?

Yes, but make sure that the RB532 ap-bridge back at the tower has also enabled WDS. Enabling WDS in addition to ap-bridge mode on that RB532 on the tower will not have any nagative impact on that towers ability to also accept normal (non WDS) client connections in addition to any WDS traffic.

Can they share a connection like that, or do I need to setup another wlan card at the tower that has no other job than to speak to the new repeater using WDS?

If you're referring to the four-card setup you mentioned earlier then there actually would be no sharing. Just put your wlan1 (uplink, to backhaul) interface into station-wds mode and bridge the WDS interface, then there will only be WDS traffic on wlan1, and this would be a very good setup.


--Tom

Tom,

Thank you very much for the help regarding this project. I have invested many hours staring at the manual, as well as two aborted installations from the inability to get this working.

The manual is less than clear on the policy and procedure to make this play....

I really appreciate your help. I will start to reconfigure this again on Sunday.

Is there a guide somewhere that someone has put together on how to use WDS, and it's application?

Adam
support@pogowave.com

Adam,

the MikroTik Wiki has some examples at

http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Wireless_Setups

some of these use WDS and you might be able to learn from them for your project.

--Tom

sorry mate , i didnt notice that you are using a station mode interface ,
that's right you cannot bridge a station mode interface , it must be station-wds