# How are interfaces involved in a bridge affected when they are connected to devices with varying speed?



## scilek (Dec 4, 2020)

Consider the setup below:





The switch is an old Cisco, with all ports running at 100Mb/s. The server runs on FreeBSD 11.4 and has two 1Gb interfaces (em0 and em1), configured in a bridge as described here: FreeBSD Bridging. The access point is a Unifi AP-AC-PRO. It has one 1Gb interface and can handle many clients at the same time. The reason why the AP is connected directly to the switch is that on this site, there are many Wi-fi clients and they must be able to access 1080p videos on the server.

I have two questions:
1. Does this make sense?
2. How is the bridge affected by this? In other words, does it run on 100Mbps or do each interface run on their relevant link speed?


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## SirDice (Dec 4, 2020)

scilek said:


> The switch is an old Cisco, with all ports running at 100Mb/s


Buy a new switch. Really, why keep that old thing around? New switches are not that expensive and perform so much better. Your entire network will improve with it. It doesn't matter how you construct the bridge or connect the AP directly to the switch, at some point you're bottlenecking things by connecting the upstream to that 100Mbit switch.

So, to answer the question, does it make sense? No, it does not. You're only adding complexity without gaining any advantage or performance improvement. Replacing that switch with a 24 1Gbit ports is the correct way to improve the situation. You may want to consider getting a switch that has a bunch of gigabit ports (for clients, AP, etc) and has two or more 10Gbit or SFP ports. That will make it more future proof. The uplinks can be used to connect multiple switches in case your network grows too big for the 24 ports. Or you can use the faster uplinks to connect the server to improve performance to/from that server (useful for file serving for example).


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## scilek (Dec 4, 2020)

SirDice said:


> Buy a new switch.



Well... That is a great idea, if you ask me, but that is strictly out of question; unless, of course, I would be willing to pay for that life-saving switch out of my own pocket. The idea is to *make* money, not loose it.

What I want I want to know if both *em0* and *em1* would both run at 100Mbps or at 100Mbps and 1Gbps respectively.


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## SirDice (Dec 4, 2020)

scilek said:


> The idea is to *make* money, not loose it.


Well, sometimes you have to invest in order to continue to make money.

Simply put, don't do this. You're only adding complexity without gains and adding another SPoF (Single Point of Failure) to the mix. If that server breaks the wireless would be offline too. If you can't afford to buy a new switch leave the situation as-is.


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## scilek (Dec 4, 2020)

SirDice said:


> Simply put, don't do this. You're only adding complexity without gains and adding another SPoF (Single Point of Failure). If that server breaks the wireless would be offline too. If you can't afford to buy a new switch leave the situation as-is.



I do not own the site. They just don't want to replace their switch. What can I do about that? I am trying to do more with less here. I know I am creating an SPoF here.

So my question is if the connection between the server and AP would be 1Gbps or 100Mbps one.

I have to make sure so that I can then proceed on to trying to convince people to make the purchases.


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## ta0kira2 (Dec 17, 2020)

scilek said:


> So my question is if the connection between the server and AP would be 1Gbps or 100Mbps one.


I don't know the actual answer, but if it provides any insight, the bridge interface would still work if you were to disconnect the switch entirely but keep the interface up. (Or if you had a third interface in the bridge that remained disconnected.)


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