Intro: First, this is my first experience with RouterOS. I’m a sysadmin and software developer. In the past, I’ve run many versions of OpenWRT and DD-WRT, recovered old OpenWRT bricks with JTAG, done some WDS, built up my own Linux based routers a few times… once around an Orinoco Bronze card and a DEC Alpha Multia connected to my WISP back in 1999. But, I am not a network guy.
Desire Driving Purchase
I want more control than my new CenturyLink/Actiontec VDSL C1000A modem provides. My OpenWRT hardware was too slow. I was running pfSense on a Dell Mini9 as my router, but I wanted to shrink my Router, AP, and switch all into a nice package. pfSense was good, but it seemed the web-UI was “the way” and CLI was an after thought and wireless-N was not supported. The hardware 2011UAS-2HnD-IN was just right… I need about 5 gigE + some ports, wireless-N, and more speed than WRT54G.
Opening Box & Docs
There was a sticker on the outside of the box that said to upgrade the firmware before use. There was NO paper in the box, no documentation – I’m fine with that, but I’d like a URL to specific docs for what I just bought. After finding http://routerboard.com/RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN this didn’t help me much. There is a gap between a hardware brochure and the RouterOS wiki that needs to be filled. I found User Manuals for the RB411 and RB750, something like that would have been nice.
Labelling
The RJ45 serial port is not labelled, I thought it was a WAN port. Also, the only clue as to the pinout on the RJ45 serial was a press release saying it had Cisco pinout. (I’m still not able to see anything on it, plugging ethernet into might have fried it?) The Reset Button described in the Quick Guide is not labelled. The “reset jumper hole (bottom of the case)” is not labelled, I had to take the case apart to figure out where it was and how to trip it.
LCD
I don’t have strong feelings one way or another. Obviously it did not cost much to throw in, if it adds only $10 I’ll take it. The best thing about it – it displays “ether boot” when you DO manage to get it into “netinstall” mode.
Quick Set
I was warned by friends that WebFig was not as good as WinBox, but was happy that it seemed fine. Quick Set looked good. I found that it was trying to configure the SFP which I did not have. Once you configure ether1, it is not reflected in Quick Set. This is confusing to someone not familiar with RouterBoard/RouterOS – the exact people that would be using Quick Set. I believed Quick Set and did NOT believe ether1 was getting a DHCP IP. Either Quick Set needs to reflect reality or it should be removed.
Upgrading
My unit came with 5.21. Seeing the firmware image .fwf on the routerboard page was confusing in that this appears to be just for the bootloader. I seemed to upgrade to 5.22 fine with “auto upgrade” that fetches the packages off the net.
Reset
At some point while configuring the unit, a reboot rendered it inaccessible. The reset button did not work as described. The “reset jumper hole” also did not work as described. (As I said, I had to take the case apart to even find these.) Following the quick start guide: 1. Pressing reset button until LEDs flash, did NOT reset the configuration. 2. Tripping the “reset jumper hole” did NOT reset the configuration. I was never able to see anything on my serial connection, as I said… I may have fried it by plugging ethernet into it. My ONLY path forward was to use Netinstall. After hours of trying, I found I could get to it by unplugging all ethernet, long press reset on boot, then plug in switch that PC was already connected to.
Default Configuration
After netinstall, I lost the default factory configuration. I had an “export” before I lost it, so I was able to reconstruct certain things. It was interesting to start from a BARE RouterOS. After doing this twice, I now have very good notes and almost my own custom configuration script. It would be VERY nice to have an organized Wiki page of “Default Factory Configurations” for all RouterBoards.
DHCP → DNS
I’m very surprised that populating the local DNS server with DHCP leases is not a well groomed feature. Back in 2004, I managed to get this working on raw Linux (Gentoo on Sparc). I then found that all the consumer routers had this built in – like DD-Wrt. Is it hard with the guts of RouterOS? I tried some of the Scripts that are supposed to do this, but so far they have not worked for me.
What MikroTik could do better:
- Put a piece of paper in the box that references http://routerboard.com/RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN
- Put a real User Manual pdf on the product page, bridging gap between RouterOS wiki and hardware spec
- Fix the reset configuration problems (boot loader?)
- Properly document reset process
- Make default factory configuration file available and easy to find
- Label RJ45 serial, reset, and reset jumper hole – or at least have these in the (missing) manual
- Explain update process as a whole, firmware update and OS update
- Give some instruction on using LCD - swiping up/down etc
- Document what Netinstall is doing, and how a person could PXE / TFTP without Windows/Netinstall.exe
- Fully support something like dnsmasq (DHCP leases populating the local DNS server)
What I like:
- The CLI is expressive and powerful
- export, print, backup/restore
- Very configurable
I’ll end with… It’s absolutely required to be able to easily reset a RouterBoard to a known state!