The (unofficial) Mikrotik site

Tips, Tricks, Scripts and Support.

IPv6 over PPPoE – RouterOS v5.10

IPv6 prefix delegation support comes to PPPoE in RouterOS version v5.10* so for those of you ready to jump onboard this release, here’s my attempt at a best-practice way to set it all up.


IPv6 has been around in RouterOS for a while now, but the specific feature that was introduced is called “DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation” which allows RouterOS to receive a prefix (or a bunch of framed routes if you’re more familiar with that terminology) that it can then distribute out itself.

This means for someone like myself, using IPv6 with my local Internet Service Provider becomes relatively straightforward, with no more need for tunneled IPv6 connections. Read the rest of this entry »

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Bridging ESX Virtual Switch Networks using MikroTik and EoIP/Vlan/VPLS

This is a bit of a different post based on some configuration I did just recently to enable the bridging of a Virtual Switch between 2 ESX hosts.

There is an VMWare option for this called a “VMware vSphere Distributed Switch” however this requires one of the higher end licencing packages so isn’t available on the free or basic packages, but there are many different uses you might have for this,  from simply creating a temporary bridge while you migrate servers to a remote host, or in my case, creating a bridge network across 2 hosts that use a RouterOS vm as the gateway/firewall for the servers. Read the rest of this entry »

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MikroTik new product announcements – October 2011

Live here at Las Vegas, Normis has just finished announcing the new products; some new and exciting info about the RB2011 as well as more details on known models.

RB2011:

- Low cost series
- Rackmount or Desktop
- 5xGigabit, 5x100Mbit
- SFP/USB/WiFi models
- Available December

Model Table

L LS US US2HnD
Type Board Board Desktop Board
SFP - + + +
USB - - + +
Wireless - - - +
Serial - - + +
LCD - - + +
New product descriptor lettering:
RM – 1U Rackmount models
IN – Indoor/Desktop models
For example RB2011-US-2HnD-IN (Red labeled box up the top) or this RB2011L-RM
Currently 7 variants planned to release gradually from December to February

Greg has some more details on other offerings (SXT 6 Pack, RB751, RB1100AH, Groove 2.4) over on his post here.

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Las Vegas

Roller coasters – check
Indoor Sky-Diving – check
Meeting new faces at MUM – check
Acquired MTCWE certification – check

I hear rumor that some new products will be announced tomorrow morning along with some new revisions to the RB2011 (not yet released).

Attended the load-balancing workshop this morning which both confirmed my ideas about how PCC should be used but also went into detail on a few new concepts such as, using the MPLS Traffic Engineering features for bandwidth based load balancing over multiple links. As usual these slides + video will be available on tiktube.com when the MikroTik guys get back home.

 

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Welcome to the jungle, mind all the bugs.

After discussion on the unofficial MikroTik mailing list, I’ve decided to create a bugtracker for helping keep a list of known outstanding MikroTik bugs.

I would’ve hoped that MikroTik could do something like this themselves to help out those of us relying day to day on the ability to keep a network running, however until such time I feel I (as well as others) am forced to take these alternative measures.

Those of you who are interested in contributing are welcome to join and/or follow at http://bugs.mikrotik-routeros.com

I’ve included a basic guide to using the bugtracker here: http://www.mikrotik-routeros.com/?page_id=228

Please feel free to comment and make suggestions.

 

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Scriplet: Grabbing PPPoE IP Address

A quick scriptlet I whipped up for a friend tonight to allow them to retrieve an IP addess from a specific PPPoE interface.
Handy for updating DynDNS entries among other things.

:local wanip [/ip address get [/ip address find where interface=pppoe-wan] address];
:set wanip [:pick $wanip 0 ([:len $wanip]-3) ];
#whatever you want to do with said IP goes here
:put $wanip;

Obviously update pppoe-wan with your interface name ;-)

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Subnetting and Serial over SSH

Subnetting:

 

Given my general lazyness in all things requiring pen and pencil; I like many others am prone to using a subnet calculator in day to day network building. That and when you think about it.. which is more likely to be correct, a computer with static algorithms or a coffee-fueled network administrator adding things up in his head? :-P

That spiel over; I discovered the following program by a company called ‘BitCricket’ whilst searching for an IPv6 compatible subnet calculator I could use offline.

http://www.bitcricket.com/ip-subnet-calculator.html – Both a Mac and Windows version are available and I’ve also been able to confirm the Windows version will run under wine for those of you using linux (one would assume your Linux computers already have Wine installed to run Winbox right? :-D )

It nicely grabs a list of all the IP (v4 and v6) addresses on the local machine and adds them to a drop down box so you can quickly check your own subnets, or just clear the address box and type in your required range.

While at this time it doesn’t actually “Subnet” IPv6 ranges for you, it does have the handy function of telling you what standard each address on a machine belongs to (or any address you type in) and we all know that /64 should be the smallest range you’re allocating to anything anyway?

I realise I’m doing a lot of this “telling you how to run your network” stuff today, but I’m a big fan of the standards defined for IPv6 and they make everyones job easier if you stick to them!

Serial over SSH:

 

I mentioned to some of the MUM participants the other day that there was an easy way to use the serial port on a Mikrotik to gain remote access to a device, logging in via an ssh user on the MikroTik. It seemed very few people were aware of this option so I figured I’d put a basic tutorial together on how to get it working.

Edit: There’s actually a rather complete explanation on the wiki - http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Special_Login

Edit 2: Another one (more in depth info in the manual) - http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Serial_Port_Usage#Accessing_a_serial_device_directly_by_SSH_.2F_telnet_.2F_mac-telnet

Serial

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MUM Australia – April 2011

So I’m sitting in a hotel in Brisbane after having had a fun filled week of all things MikroTik.

Highlights:

  • I’m now a fully qualified MTCNA.
  • Meeting Normis, Janis and Arnis.
  • Seeing the new RB751N (pics later on).

 

All in all the meeting was great and I’m sure we’ll see presentations (my favourites were the MPLS and IPv6 presentations) appear on http://www.tiktube.com/ soon!

Many of the planned IPv6 features were also mentioned so I’m hanging out and keeping my ear open for any updates there, specifically in the hotspot and DHCPv6 (prefix delegation) areas.

Now, those aforementioned pictures:

Size comparison photo.. for comparing sizes..

RB751 + USB + High Power 2.4ghz 802.11n Dual-chain MIMO.

MikroTik's answer to the Ubiquiti bullet.. of course this is a fully functioning router thou :-D

RB751UP = RB751 + USB port + PoE for MikroTik devices.

Huge thanks to DuxTel for organising the event and hope to see everyone back there again next year or the year after! :-)

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