Can I do this with my EdgeRouter ER-6P? (Bridging/switching question)

[TangoEchoAlpha]

I have an EdgeRouter ER-6P, which at the moment has my WAN connection via PPPOE on eth0 and LAN on eth1 - this feeds a managed switch with all of my other devices/APs attached to that switch.

The remaining ports on the ER-6P are unused at the moment and I was wondering about the best way to make use of them. From what I understand, the ER-6P doesn't have a hardware switch so anything would be in software - is that the case? If it is, I don't see it as an issue as the CPU/MEM usage on the router barely breaks into double figures.

So I guess that means that the only way I can make use of eth2 through to eth4 is to create a bridge and add those interfaces along with eth1 to that new bridge? Or is there an alternative I haven't seen?

In an ideal world I would like to have one of the spare ethX ports on their own subnet/interface, so I can have OpenVPN running on just that interface and leaving all the exisiting LAN on eth1 not connected to VPN. Is that doable?

I am not adverse to the idea of trying OpenWRT, although from research it doesn't support POE on the ER-6P. That's not an issue as the separate switch is providing POE to devices that need it. I'd rather not virtualise the router and would rather keep it separate on bare metal.

 

[WJA96]

Yes, just set them all to bridged and it will function as a software switch.

And what you want to do (separate routed subnet per port) is exactly what it is designed to do. Just add the extra network to that port, with/without DHCP and the router will route traffic between them. They’ll be completely separate networks, but you can link them if you want to do that.

 

[TangoEchoAlpha]

@WJA96 Thanks, will give it a go!

Sometimes I find the ER GUI hard work, no doubt it's powerful but not that intuitive in places. Often it's easier to spin up SSH or console within the GUI