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Introduction

Ethernet over IP (EoIP) Tunneling is a MikroTik RouterOS protocol based on GRE RFC 1701 that creates an Ethernet tunnel between two routers on top of an IP connection. The EoIP tunnel may run over IPIP tunnel, PPTP tunnel, or any other connection capable of transporting IP.
When the bridging function of the router is enabled, all Ethernet traffic (all Ethernet protocols) will be bridged just as if there where a physical Ethernet interface and cable between the two routers (with bridging enabled). This protocol makes multiple network schemes possible.

Network setups with EoIP interfaces:

  • Possibility to bridge LANs over the Internet
  • Possibility to bridge LANs over encrypted tunnels
  • Possibility to bridge LANs over 802.11b 'ad-hoc' wireless networks

The EoIP protocol encapsulates Ethernet frames in GRE (IP protocol number 47) packets (just like PPTP) and sends them to the remote side of the EoIP tunnel.

Configuration Examples

Parameter tunnel-id is a method of identifying a tunnel. It must be unique for each EoIP tunnel.

EoIP tunnel adds at least 42 byte overhead (8byte GRE + 14 byte Ethernet + 20 byte IP). MTU should be set to 1500 to eliminate packet fragmentation inside the tunnel (that allows transparent bridging of Ethernet-like networks so that it would be possible to transport full-sized Ethernet frame over the tunnel).

When bridging EoIP tunnels, it is highly recommended to set unique MAC addresses for each tunnel for the bridge algorithms to work correctly. For EoIP interfaces you can use MAC addresses that are in the range from 00:00:5E:80:00:00 - 00:00:5E:FF:FF:FF , which IANA has reserved for such cases. Alternatively, you can set the second bit of the first byte to modify the auto-assigned address into a 'locally administered address', assigned by the network administrator, and thus use any MAC address, you just need to ensure they are unique between the hosts connected to one bridge.

Example #1

Let us assume we want to bridge two networks: 'Office LAN' and 'Remote LAN'. By using EoIP setup can be made so that Office and Remote LANs are in the same Layer2 broadcast domain.

Consider the following setup:

As you know wireless stations cannot be bridged, to overcome this limitation (not involving WDS) we will create an EoIP tunnel over the wireless link and bridge it with interfaces connected to local networks.

We will not cover wireless configuration in this example, let's assume that the wireless link is already established.

At first, we create an EoIP tunnel on our gateway:

[admin@Our_GW] interface eoip> add name="eoip-remote" tunnel-id=0 remote-address=10.0.0.2
[admin@Our_GW] interface eoip> enable eoip-remote
[admin@Our_GW] interface eoip> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
  0    name=eoip-remote mtu=1500 arp=enabled remote-address=10.0.0.2 tunnel-id=0

Remote router:

[admin@Remote] interface eoip> add name="eoip-main" tunnel-id=0remote-address=10.0.0.1
[admin@Remote] interface eoip> enable eoip-main
[admin@Remote] interface eoip> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
  0   name=eoip mtu=1500 arp=enabled remote-address=10.0.0.1 tunnel-id=0

Next, we will bridge local interfaces with EoIP tunnel on our GW:

[admin@Our_GW] interface bridge> add 
[admin@Our_GW] interface bridge> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
 0  R name="bridge1" mtu=1500 arp=enabled mac-address=00:00:00:00:00:00 
      protocol-mode=none priority=0x8000 auto-mac=yes 
      admin-mac=00:00:00:00:00:00 max-message-age=20s forward-delay=15s 
      transmit-hold-count=6 ageing-time=5m 
[admin@Our_GW] interface bridge> port add bridge=bridge1 interface=eoip-remote
[admin@Our_GW] interface bridge> port add bridge=bridge1 interface=office-eth
[admin@Our_GW] interface bridge> port print
Flags: X - disabled, I - inactive, D - dynamic
 #    INTERFACE      BRIDGE  PRIORITY PATH-COST
 0    eoip-remote    bridge1 128      10
 1    office-eth     bridge1 128      10

Remote router:

[admin@Remote] interface bridge> add 
[admin@Remote] interface bridge> print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
 0  R name="bridge1" mtu=1500 arp=enabled mac-address=00:00:00:00:00:00 
      protocol-mode=none priority=0x8000 auto-mac=yes 
      admin-mac=00:00:00:00:00:00 max-message-age=20s forward-delay=15s 
      transmit-hold-count=6 ageing-time=5m 
[admin@Remote] interface bridge> port add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether
[admin@Remote] interface bridge> port add bridge=bridge1 interface=eoip-main
[admin@Remote] interface bridge> port print
Flags: X - disabled, I - inactive, D - dynamic
 #    INTERFACE      BRIDGE  PRIORITY PATH-COST
 0    ether          bridge1 128      10
 1    eoip-main      bridge1 128      10

Now both sites are in the same Layer2 broadcast domain. You can set up IP addresses from the same network on both sites.

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