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bwayne
bwayne
New Member
November 25, 2016
Question

Bridge mode - differences between the two settings

  • November 25, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 21992 views

Hello everyone, For 2 years I've been working with FGT and few days ago I bought my first FortiAP 21D. From the cookbook and other documentation, I know that FAP can work in Bridge mode in two ways: 1. Setting the 'Local brigde with Forti APs interface' in Traffic Mode in the SSID settings - then connect FortiAP unit to LAN interface in a remote location (a location other than the FortiGate interface). Result: WiFi and wired clients are on the same LAN subnet. eg: http://cookbook.fortinet....ridge-with-fortiap-54/ http://cookbook.fortinet....a-wifi-bridge-fortiap/ 2. Setting 'Tunnel to the WiFi controller' in Traffic Mode in the SSID settings - then connect FortiAP to the dedicated internal interface in FGT unit and combine the WiFi and wired interfaces with software switch. Result: WiFi and wired clients are on the same LAN subnet. eg: http://cookbook.fortinet....ith-a-software-switch/ http://www.fortinetguru.c...ith-a-software-switch/ http://www.fortinetguru.c...ith-a-software-switch/ What are the main differences between this settings? Which are the best? Thank you for the reply

    1 reply

    wanglei_FTNT
    Staff
    wanglei_FTNT
    Staff
    November 28, 2016

    The major difference between mode 1 and mode 2 is that how end user traffic is forwarded. 

    Mode 1)

    All traffic is forwarded to local network by AP

     

    2) all traffic is tunneled to controller 1st 

     

    Depending on your needs, you can have mixed deployment as well. For example, some SSIDs are put into mode 1 and some SSIDs are working at mode 2

    MikePruett
    MikePruett
    New Member
    November 29, 2016

    One thing to take into consideration as well, Tunnel mode adds some overhead so if you have custom MTU sizes etc you can end up with fragmented packets that cause strange behavior at times.

    Nils
    Nils
    New Member
    November 29, 2016

    If you tunnel the traffic to the controller and create a software switch, all traffic handled by the switch is running in the CPU.

    I would say that's a drawback.

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