Router general: bridge port hardware addresses

Banana Pi Router design
1

I’m running my bridged dsa-ports with identical mac addresses.

Just like this (STP) example: image

Sometimes one would see each port has an unique mac address.

What is the consideration to use identical or unique mac-addresses?

Would this impact HW_OFFLOAD?

2

Afaik the bridges should not have same mac as multiple switches normally building a tree (stp) where clients are stored (macs) which are reachable behind a switch. This is the main advantage of switches compared to hubs which were the first devices for tree-like structure of networks. Some users may know older topologies like token-ring and bus-like.

So to have the shortest path to a client device switches must have different macs…in case of active switches (with ip) including sw bridges it is a must as else you flood your network with arp-requests and similar infrastructure protocols.

Imho not as flow offload only works between hw interfaces and maybe ppp.

3

To be clear here:

I’m asking about the mac addresses of lan0, lan1, lan2, lan3 (bridged to brlan). In my setup, the mac address of brlan is identical to the mac address of lan0 is identical to the mac address of lan1, etc. So on my first switch, they are all aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:00, and on another bridge/switch in my network, all are bb:bb:bb:bb:bb:bb:00 (almost as in the picture above)

brlan   aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:00 bridge with the following ports:
lan0    aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:00
lan1    aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:00
lan2    aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:00
lan3    aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:00
wlan0   aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:08
wlan1   aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:10

These are different to the mac address of interfaces on any another bridge/switch in my network

The other option would be:

brlan   aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:00 bridge with the following ports:
lan0    aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:00
lan1    aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:01
lan2    aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:02
lan3    aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:03
wlan0   aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:08
wlan1   aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:10

(The brlan mac automatically is always the lowest number of the ports on the bridge, but I think I read somewhere that may have changed. I set it manually)

And since we’re talking about bananapi routers, all lan0/1/2/3 ports are dsa ports.

That is why I’m asking, because they share the same mac address (the lan0/1/2/3 do, but different with the wan interface).

(Note irrelevant to this subject: the numbering of wlan0 allows for up to 7 extra bss, wlan1 even 15 extra bss)