1. Why would repeater mode be faster than WDS-Slave? Is there additional overhead? What is it?
2. Apart from speed, is there any other reason that repeater mode is the new preferred method over WDS-Slave?

Years ago, when Station-Bridge + Virtual AP mode ("repeater mode") came out in RouterOS, I performed some speed tests using that mode compared to WDS-Slave mode, which essentially is the same solution for wireless backhaul + AP, sharing the same radio.

In my tests, the repeater mode was a little faster than the WDS mode. From my reading, this is also the preferred mode used by the Audience product's so-called "mesh" feature when using WPS to join an extension to an AP (1. Station-Bridge, 2. WDS-Slave, 3. Station-Pseudobridge, 4. Station-Pseudobridge-Clone).

But later, about a year ago, I was having problems where stations would be blocked on the repeater device, with a log message stating that the MAC was present on another port. Basically it was acting like a bridge/switch loop was occurring, or the MAC FIB wasn't properly being updated or aged out. I opened a trouble ticket, but never heard back. So I switched to WDS-Slave mode, and that solved the problem.

I now need to build 15 more networks using 2 to 5 devices in ptp or ptmp, and feel like I should use WDS-Slave for safety, because I don't want to run into the frustrating problem I had in repeater mode.

I have two questions:

1. Why would repeater mode be faster than WDS-Slave? Is there additional overhead? What is it?
2. Apart from speed, is there any other reason that repeater mode is the new preferred method over WDS-Slave?

Thanks!

You are sure you did not do backup the station configuration and restore in another device to make a clone? This would create devices with identical MAC addresses.

You are sure you did not do backup the station configuration and restore in another device to make a clone? This would create devices with identical MAC addresses.

Yep, I'm well aware of that problem.