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There are several types of switch chips on Routerboards and they have different sets of features. Most of them (from now on "Other") has have only the basic "Port Switching" feature, but there are a few with more features:
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- For QCA8337, Atheros8327, Atheros8316, Atheros8227, and Atheros7240 the Tx/Rx rate limits can be changed with
bandwidth
property on"/interface ethernet"
menu, see more details in the Ethernet manual. For RTL8367, 88E6393X, 88E6191X, 88E6190, MT7621 and MT7531 Tx/Rx rate limit can be changed withegress-rate
andingress-rate
properties on "/interface ethernet switch port
" menu. - MAC addresses are learned up to the specified number, but the content of a switch host table is not available in RouterOS and static host configuration is not supported.
- Bridge HW vlan-filtering was added in the RouterOS 7.1rc1 (for RTL8367) and 7.1rc5 (for MT7621) versions. The switch does not support other
ether-type
0x88a8 or 0x9100 (only 0x8100 is supported) and notag-stacking
. Using these features will disable HW offload.
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[admin@MikroTik] > /interface ethernet switch print Flags: I - invalid # NAME TYPE MIRROR-SOURCE MIRROR-TARGET SWITCH-ALL-PORTS 0 switch1 Atheros-8327 none none 1 switch2 Atheros-8227 none none |
Depending on the switch type there might be available or not available some can be different configuration capabilities available.
Features
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Port Switching
In order to To set up port switching on non-CRS series devices, check the Bridge Hardware Offloading page.
Note |
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Port switching in RouterOS v6.41 and newer is done using the bridge configuration. Prior to Before RouterOS v6.41 port switching was done using the master-port property. |
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Ether1 port on RB450G/RB435G/RB850Gx2 devices has a feature that allows it to be removed/added to the default switch group, this setting is available on the /interface ethernet switch switch
menu. By default ether1 port will be included in the switch group.
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/interface ethernet switch set switch1 mirror-source=ether2 mirror-target=ether3 |
Warning |
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If you set mirror-source as an Ethernet port for a device with at least two switch chips and these mirror-source ports are in a single bridge while mirror-target for both switch chips are set to send the packets to the CPU, then this will result in a loop, which can make your device inaccessible. |
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Warning |
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Ingress traffic is considered as traffic that is being sent IN a certain port, this port is sometimes called ingress port. Egress traffic is considered as traffic that is being sent OUT of a certain port, this port is sometimes called egress port. Distinguishing them is very important in order to properly set up VLAN filtering since some properties apply only to either ingress or egress traffic. |
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Property | Description |
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vlan-mode (check | disabled | fallback | secure; Default: disabled) | Changes the VLAN lookup mechanism against the VLAN Table for ingress traffic.
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vlan-header (add-if-missing | always-strip | leave-as-is; Default: leave-as-is) | Sets action which is performed on the port for egress traffic.
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default-vlan-id (auto | integer: 0..4095; Default: auto) | Adds a VLAN tag with the specified VLAN ID on all untagged ingress traffic on a port, should be used with vlan-header set to always-strip on a port to configure the port to be the access port. For hybrid ports default-vlan-id id is used to tag untagged traffic. If two ports have the same default default-vlan-id, then VLAN tag is not added since the switch chip assumes that traffic is being forwarded between access ports. |
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Note |
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On QCA8337 and Atheros8327 switch chips, a default |
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Packets without VLAN tag are treated just like as if they had a VLAN tag with port default-vlan-id
. If vlan-mode=check
or vlan=mode=secure
is configured, in order to forward packets without VLAN tags you have to add an entry to the VLAN table with the same VLAN ID according to default-vlan-id
.
Property | Description |
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disabled (no | yes; Default: no) | Enables or disables switch VLAN entry. |
independent-learning (no | yes; Default: yes) | Whether to use shared-VLAN-learning (SVL) or independent-VLAN-learning (IVL). |
ports (name; Default: none) | Interface member list for the respective VLAN. This setting accepts comma-separated values. e.g. ports=ether1,ether2 . |
switch (name; Default: none) | Name of the switch for which the respective VLAN entry is intended for. |
vlan-id (integer: 0..4095; Default:) | The VLAN ID for certain switch port configurations. |
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Note |
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Devices with MT7621, MT7531, RTL8367, 88E6393X, 88E6191X, 88E6190 switch chips support HW offloaded vlan-filtering in RouterOS v7. VLAN-related configuration on the "/interface ethernet switchswitch" menu is not available. |
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Both vlan-mode
and vlan-header
along with the VLAN Table can be used to configure VLAN tagging, untagging and filtering, there are multiple combinations that are possible, each achieving a different result. Below you can find a table of what kind of traffic is going to be sent out through an egress port when a certain traffic is received on an ingress port for each VLAN Mode.
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Note |
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The tables above are meant for more advanced configurations and to double-check your own understanding of how packets will be processed with each VLAN related property. |
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Property | Description |
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copy-to-cpu (no | yes; Default: no) | Whether to send a frame copy to switch CPU port from a frame with a matching MAC destination address (matching destination or source address for CRS3xx series switches) |
drop (no | yes; Default: no) | Whether to drop a frame with a matching MAC source address received on a certain port (matching destination or source address for CRS3xx series switches) |
mac-address (MAC; Default: 00:00:00:00:00:00) | Host's MAC address |
mirror (no | yes; Default: no) | Whether to send a frame copy to mirror-target port from a frame with a matching MAC destination address (matching destination or source address for CRS3xx series switches) |
ports (name; Default: none) | Name of the interface, static MAC address can be mapped to more that than one port, including switch CPU port |
redirect-to-cpu (no | yes; Default: no) | Whether to redirect a frame to switch CPU port from a frame with a matching MAC destination address (matching destination or source address for CRS3xx series switches) |
share-vlan-learned (no | yes; Default: no) | Whether the static host MAC address lookup is used with shared-VLAN-learning (SVL) or independent-VLAN-learning (IVL). The SVL mode is used for those VLAN entries that do not support IVL or IVL is disabled (independent-learning=no) |
switch (name; Default: none) | Name of the switch to which the MAC address is going to be assigned to |
vlan-id (integer: 0..4095; Default:) | VLAN ID for the statically added MAC address entry |
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Note |
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Every switch chip has a finite number of MAC addresses it can store on the chip, see the Introduction table for a specific host table size. Once a host table is completely full, different techniques can be utilized to cope with the situation, for example, the switch can remove older entries to free space for more recent MAC addresses (used on QCA-8337 and Atheros-8327 switch chips), another option is to simply ignore the new MAC addresses and only remove entries after a timeout has passed (used on Atheros8316, Atheros8227, Atheros-7240, ICPlus175D and Realtek-RTL8367 switch chips), the last option is a combination of the previous two - only allow a certain amount of entries to be renewed and keep the other host portion intact till the timeout (used on MediaTek-MT7621, MT7531 switch chip). These techniques cannot be changed with configuration. |
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Warning |
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For Atheros8316, Atheros8227 and Atheros-7240 switch chips, the switch-cpu port will always participate in the host learning process when at least one hardware offloaded bridge port is active on the switching group. It will cause the switch-cpu port to learn MAC addresses from non-HW offloaded interfaces. This might cause packet loss when a single bridge contains HW and non-HW offloaded interfaces. Also, packet loss might appear when a duplicate MAC address is used on the same switching group regardless if hosts are located on different logical networks. It is recommended to use HW offloading only when all bridge ports are able to can use HW offloaded or keep it disabled on all switch ports when one or more bridge ports cannot be configured with HW offloading. |
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Rule table is a very powerful tool allowing wire-speed packet filtering, forwarding and VLAN tagging based on L2, L3 and L4 protocol header field conditionconditions. The menu contains an ordered list of rules just like in /ip firewall filter
, so ACL rules are checked for each packet until a match has been found. If there are multiple rules that can match, then only the first rule will be triggered. A rule without any action parameters is a rule to accept the packet.
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Note |
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IPv4 and IPv6 specific conditions cannot be present in the same rule. |
Note |
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Due to the fact that Because the rule table is processed entirely in switch chips hardware, there is a limitation to how many rules you may have. Depending on the number of conditions (MAC layer, IP layer, IPv6, L4 layer) you use in your rules, the number of active rules may vary from 8 to 32 for Atheros8316 switch chip, from 24 to 96 for Atheros8327/QCA8337 switch chip and from 42 to 256 for 88E6393X switch chip. You can always dodo |
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Warning |
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The |
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Warning |
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Switch chips with a VLAN table support (QCA8337, Atheros8327, Atheros8316, Atheros8227 and Atheros7240) can override the port isolation configuration when enabling a VLAN lookup on the switch port (the |
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In some scenarios you might need to isolate a group of devices from other groups, this can be done using the switch port isolation feature. This is useful when you have multiple networks but you want to use a single switch, with port isolation you can allow certain switch ports to be able to communicate through only a set of switch ports. In this example, devices on ether1-3 will only be able to communicate with devices that are on ether1-3, while devices on ether4-5 will only be able to communicate with devices on ether4-5 (ether1-3 is not able to communicate with ether4-5)
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Note |
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By default, the bridge interface is configured with |
Then specify in the forwarding-override
property all ports that you want to be in the same isolated switch group (except the port on which you are applying the property), for example, to create an isolated switch group for A devices:
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All switch chips have a special port that is called switchX-cpu, this is the CPU port for a switch chip, it is meant to forward traffic from a switch chip to the CPU, such a port is required for management traffic and for routing features. By default the switch chip ensures that this special CPU port is not congested and sends out Pause Frames when link capacity is exceeded to make sure the port is not oversaturated, this feature is called CPU Flow Control. Without this feature packets that might be crucial for routing or management purposes might get dropped.
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Some switch chips are capable of reporting statistics, this can be useful to monitor how many packets are sent to the CPU from the built-in switch chip. These statistics can also be used to monitor CPU Flow Control. You can find an example of the switch chip's statistics below:
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Some devices have multiple CPU cores that are directly connected to a built-in switch chip using separate data lanes. These devices can report which data lane was used to forward the packet from or to the CPU port from the switch chip. For such devices an extra line is added for each row, the first line represents data that was sent using the first data lane, the second line represents data that was sent using the second data line, and so on. You can find an example of the switch chip's statistics for a device with multiple data lanes connecting the CPU and the built-in switch chip:
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Note |
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Make sure you have added all needed interfaces to the VLAN table when using secure |
Note |
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It is possible to use the built-in switch chip and the CPU at the same time to create a Switch-Router setup, where a device acts as a switch and as a router at the same time. You can find a configuration example in the Switch-Router guide. |
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RouterBOARDs with Atheros switch chips can be used for 802.1Q Trunking. This feature in RouterOS v6 is supported by QCA8337, Atheros8316, Atheros8327, Atheros8227 and Atheros7240 switch chips. In this example, ether3, ether4, and ether5 interfaces are access ports, while ether2 is a trunk port. VLAN IDs for each access port: ether3 - 400, ether4 - 300, ether5 - 200.
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/interface ethernet switch port set ether2 vlan-mode=secure vlan-header=add-if-missing set ether3 vlan-mode=secure vlan-header=always-strip default-vlan-id=200 set ether4 vlan-mode=secure vlan-header=always-strip default-vlan-id=300 set ether5 vlan-mode=secure vlan-header=always-strip default-vlan-id=400 |
- Setting
vlan-mode=secure
ensures strict use of the VLAN table. - Setting
vlan-header=always-strip
for access ports removes the VLAN header from the frame when it leaves the switch chip. - Setting
vlan-header=add-if-missing
for trunk port adds VLAN header to untagged frames. default-vlan-id
specifies what VLAN ID is added for untagged ingress traffic of the access port.
Note |
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On QCA8337 and Atheros8327 switch chips, a default |
VLAN Example 2 (Trunk and Hybrid Ports)
VLAN Hybrid ports which can forward both tagged and untagged traffic. This configuration is supported only by some Gigabit switch chips (QCA8337, Atheros8327).
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Note |
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By default, the bridge interface is configured with |
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/interface ethernet switch vlan add ports=ether2,ether3,ether4,ether5 switch=switch1 vlan-id=200 add ports=ether2,ether3,ether4,ether5 switch=switch1 vlan-id=300 add ports=ether2,ether3,ether4,ether5 switch=switch1 vlan-id=400 |
In the switch port menu set vlan-mode
on all ports and also default-vlan-id
on planned hybrid ports:
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/interface ethernet switch port set ether2 vlan-mode=secure vlan-header=leave-as-is set ether3 vlan-mode=secure vlan-header=leave-as-is default-vlan-id=200 set ether4 vlan-mode=secure vlan-header=leave-as-is default-vlan-id=300 set ether5 vlan-mode=secure vlan-header=leave-as-is default-vlan-id=400 |
vlan-mode=secure
will ensure strict use of the VLAN table.default-vlan-id
will define VLAN for untagged ingress traffic on the port.- In QCA8337 and Atheros8327 chips when
vlan-mode=securesecure
is used, it ignores switch portvlan-header
options. VLAN table entries handle all the egress tagging/untagging and works asvlan-header=leave-as-is
on all ports. It means what comes in tagged, goes out tagged as well, onlydefault-vlan-id
frames are untagged at the egress port.
Management access configuration
In these examples, there will be shown examples for multiple scenarios, but each of these scenarios require requires you to have switched ports. Below you can find how to switch multiple ports:
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Note |
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By default, the bridge interface is configured with |
In these examples, it will be assumed that ether1 is the trunk port and ether2 is the access port, for configuration as the following:
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/interface ethernet switch port set ether1 vlan-header=add-if-missing set ether2 default-vlan-id=100 vlan-header=always-strip /interface ethernet switch vlan add ports=ether1,ether2,switch1-cpu switch=switch1 vlan-id=100 |
Tagged
In order to To make the device accessible only from a certain VLAN, you need to create a new VLAN interface on the bridge interface and assign an IP address to it:
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Note |
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Only specify trunk ports in this VLAN table entry, it is not possible to allow access to the CPU with tagged traffic through an access port since the access port will tag all ingress traffic with the specified |
When the VLAN table is configured, you can enable vlan-mode=secure
to limit access to the CPU:
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/interface ethernet switch port set ether1 vlan-header=add-if-missing vlan-mode=secure set ether2 default-vlan-id=100 vlan-header=always-strip vlan-mode=secure set switch1-cpu vlan-header=leave-as-is vlan-mode=secure |
Untagged
In order to To make the device accessible from the access port, create a VLAN interface with the same VLAN ID as set in default-vlan-id
, for example, VLAN 100, and add an IP address to it:
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Warning |
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Most commonly an access (untagged) port is accompanied with by a trunk (tagged) port. In case of untagged access to the CPU, you are forced to specify both the access port and the trunk port, this gives access to the CPU from the trunk port as well. Not always this is desired and a Firewall might be required on top of VLAN filtering. |
When the VLAN table is configured, you can enable vlan-mode=secure
to limit access to the CPU:
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/interface ethernet switch port set ether1 vlan-header=add-if-missing vlan-mode=secure set ether2 default-vlan-id=100 vlan-header=always-strip vlan-mode=secure set switch1-cpu vlan-header=leave-as-is vlan-mode=secure |
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To setup the management port using untagged traffic on a device with the Atheros7240 switch chip, you will need to set |
Untagged from tagged port
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Specify which ports are allowed to access the CPU. Use vlan-id
that is used in default-vlan-id
for switch-cpu and trunk ports, by default it is set to 0 or 1.
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/interface ethernet switch vlan add ports=ether1,switch1-cpu switch=switch1 vlan-id=1 |
When the VLAN table is configured, you can enable vlan-mode=secure
to limit access to the CPU:
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Note |
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This configuration example is not possible for devices with the Atheros8316 and Atheros7240 switch chips. For devices with QCA8337 and Atheros8327 switch chips, it is possible to use any other |
Inter-VLAN routing
Many MikroTik's devices come with a built-in switch chip that can be used to greatly improve overall throughput when configured properly. Devices with a switch chip can be used as a router and a switch at the same time, this gives you the possibility to use a single device instead of multiple devices for your network.
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Add each port to the VLAN table and allow these ports to access the CPU in order to make DHCP and routing work:
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/interface ethernet switch vlan add independent-learning=yes ports=ether2,switch1-cpu switch=switch1 vlan-id=10 add independent-learning=yes ports=ether3,switch1-cpu switch=switch1 vlan-id=20 |
Specify each port to be as an access port, and enable secure VLAN mode on each port and on the switch1-cpu port:
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Note |
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On QCA8337 and Atheros8327 switch chips, a default |
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