SFP Ports on MX for WAN

[GaryShainberg]

As many of you know, there has been a constant complaint that you can not use the SFP ports on an MX as a WAN port, there is a work around, which is creating a /30 subnet vLAN between the SFP port and one ethernet port to act as a pseudo fibre converter.

However, can someone tell me if there is a fix for this in the pipeline - all we want is for one of the SFP ports to be treated like port 2 - software switchable between ethernet LAN or WAN.

Surely this can't be too hard to implement as its already done for port 2 (or 4 on smaller MX's)

"rant over"

[SunnyJ]

Is this for MX84 or MX100?

It is not in the pipeline at this time. Although it is not the pipeline, our development team take your feedback seriously. I encourage you to use the Meraki dashboard to "make a wish" and submit a feature request. You can submit a feature request at the bottom of any dashboard page. Any wish that is made sends an email to our Product Managers and Development Teams. These wishes are taken into consideration and are used to help shape our product roadmaps.

Thank you, 

Sunny Joo 

[GaryShainberg]

@SunnyJ 

Thanks and if I make any more wishes on this I might just fly away on Tinkerbells fairy flying dust 🙂

Yep, I have used the button a few times 🙂

[DOM360]

Can you explain how you did the pseudo fibre converter? I am having to do the same thing and I can not seem to get the settings to work for me.

[cmr]

If you use an MX250/450 they have SFP+ WAN ports, or is that too much for your needs?

[DOM360]

that is too much for my needs at the moment. I just got two mx 100s

[cmr]

Yes it does seem silly that on the MX100, the hardware is clearly capable of having any port set as a WAN port (even having dedicated lights for it), yet the software only allows port 2 to be changed.

It does seem a little remiss of the developers to not offer the option of different/more ports.

[DOM360]

So far If i create a vlan for the fiber trunk between the SFP port and LAN/WAN 2 port and set a dhcp on it and put a cable between LAN/WAN port 2 and WAN port then it seems to create a sort of media converting bridge for internet but that seems silly.

[GaryShainberg]

@DOM360 

All you need to do is create a vlan, say vlan 999 and give it the /29 or /30 subnet you get from your ISP and then put one of the sfp ports (say 26) nand one of the LAN ports (say 24) in this subnet as access ports then just plug the ISP fibre connection into the sfp port (26) and then connected the LAN port (24) to your WAN port of the MX and thats it - you are now just using ports 24 and 26 as a simple media converter.

One point to remember though, you have added a new single point of failure - the switch, but unfortunately is "hobson's choice" 

Hope this helps

[DOM360]

But what is the point of using the vlan to switch from fiber to cat 6 if you are trying to minimize latency using fiber just to put a copper wire right back in the equation. 

[cmr]

If you are replacing a 2km* copper line with 1.99km of fibre and 1m of copper then you will still see most of the latency reduction.  It is to do with how quickly the signal propogates either along the metal (usually copper) wire or the glass (sometimes plastic) fibre.  The latter can approach the speed of light and is many times quicker!

*Imperial equivalents are also applicable 😉

[GaryShainberg]

Hi there,

The issue for us was that we where faced with a "curved ball" that the ISP who said they would deliver the service on an ethernet (RJ45) presentation but delivered on fibre (LC) which was also single-mode and all we had was the ability to loan a single-mode SPF adaptor, so we had to JFDI with what we had.

In the real world and with planning we would have taken a media converter (which I hate, as its another PoF) and used this, but again - and a lesson - if we had been told by the ISP that they would be presenting the service to us on fibre, we would have taken a multi-mode media adaptor as this is the standard for in prem-infrastructure, so we would have still be screwed ..........

Its all about setting expectations !!!

[arjgoodwin]

I'm trying to get this working with no joy. 

I've given the VLAN the subnet from my ISP but as it's /30 I don't have a free IP to assign to the meraki, it won't let me save it without one. If I use the WAN IP provided from my ISP, what do I then assign to the WAN interface?

[Bruce]

Hi @arjgoodwin, welcome to the community. Are you able to explain what you are trying to do? It might also be with starting a new topic otherwise people might think your adding to the existing topic.