Hi Cody, Firstly, I don't work for the Openstack team. I'm with Red Hat Openshift, but I've worked with Openstack in the past and still have an interest in it and follow some of the mailing lists. Older versions of Openstack have the integration bridge (br-int) which routes traffic to the external bridge (br-ex) and traffic then flows through the physical interface. But this limits you to a single floating IP range. So, newer versions of Openstack set the external bridge setting as empty by default ( NeutronExternalNetworkBridge: "''" ). This allows you the capability of mapping multiple physical interfaces (bonded interfaces or trunked vlans) directly. While this method removes the ex-br, you are still introducing an overhead as you are routing multiple networks over one or more physical interfaces - hence the additional CPU usage. What the docs are saying is, if you intend to use multiple external networks (multiple floating IP rages) then leave this empty (as by default): NeutronExternalNetworkBridge: "''" But if you are only intending to use one external network (one floating IP range), then revert back to the old way of mapping the network to br-ex - otherwise, you are introducing an additional unnecessary overhead that you are not making use of. hope this helps. kind regards, On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 6:13 PM, Cody <codeology.lab(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Paul Yates Red Hat, Communications House, Cork Road, Waterford, Ireland. phone: +353 51 810166 <%2B420%20532294734> Email: pyates(a)redhat.com <lsvobodo(a)redhat.com&gt;