Can someone point me in the right direction?

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hi all -

I’m new to using the MikroTik device and I’ve hit some snags.

A little background.

I have a technical degree from a community college in Networking and Infrastructure. We mostly focused on Cisco and Cisco IOS devices.

However, this was about 6 years ago and since then I haven’t done much network admin work nor have I really kept up on it. I’ve mostly been in software support and computer hardware stuff.

The company I currently work for (since my degree is on my resume, and they read it…) has asked me to make some changes/optimizations to their network and I’m lost. The guy who set it up was kind of a hack and mainly just fudged his way through things. We’re getting ready to make some big changes and the way we’re currently setup just will not work.

So I’ve come here for some pointers and insight on the tasks I’ve been asked to perform.

(FYI, it appears to that the hardware is an RB750 and from what I can see it appears to be software version 2.9)

Currently we are using 3 of the port for VLANs and 2 of them for WAN connections to our internal servers. I’m not sure that this is the best setup, but it seems to have worked up until now.

Here’s what I need to do.

  1. Setup some sort of Link Aggregation to use two ISP’s for the connection across the whole LAN. We currently have a fiber provider but are looking to add a cable provider for added speed and redundancy. My boss originally wanted to purchase something like FatPipe but has since retracted after we looked at the price. If I remember correctly this should be able to be done, but I’m not familiar enough with the way this system works to know how to set this up. I’ve found the wiki post on this but I was wondering if someone could elaborate/simplify the process a little for me.

  2. We’re looking to upgrade to the RB1200 to allow us to create further VLANs if necessary in the future. Will I be able to backup from our current device, and restore the backup to the new one to keep our current configuration? While I (personally) would like the time to sit around and teach myself the interface and configure it myself, I don’t know if that’s going to be something I’ll have the time to do. Using a backup/restore would be a huge time saver.

  3. How do I remove the VLANs that have been created and/or create another? I’ve looked a little into this and I’m not quite sure what’s the best direction to go with it. As part of my first question, I will need to free up one of the ports. This shouldn’t be a problem as one of the VLANS is not in use and won’t be needed for a while.


    Any tips/pointers you folks can provide would be greatly appreciated. I’ve been trying to sort this out myself but I don’t want to mess anything up along the way.

2

The RB750 is a fairly small router so an upgrade to the RB1200 or similar larger capacity router would mean some significant changes. It is possible to export/import sections of config certainly but any load balancing settings would obviously be new. A couple of things you mentioned struck me:

I highlighted several red flags above. I suspect that you can’t even be sure if the current installation is secure. Wouldn’t it be in your company’s best interests to ask your boss for a small budget to get some paid help? The risk reduction and peace of mind that even $200 would buy is surely worth it!

You don’t have to present it in a negative way. You can simply say that you don’t know the history of the device, it isn’t Cisco, the brand seems to be good value which means that in the overall budget you can afford to include some consulting so that you can all sleep soundly. :slight_smile:

3

Trust me, I tried barking up that tree.

That’s actually how one of the VLANs was created, paying someone to set it up for us.

It presents two problems.

  1. It’s not something we can do on our own or troubleshoot without going back and paying someone to do so.
  2. I’m a DIY kind of guy, I want to learn it so I know what I’m doing with it. I build race cars in my free time, so I’m all about the control and the ability to modify as needed.

It sounds like I’m going to get some bench time with it though before we have to put it in to production, so that may be something off of my chest.

4

Hah! Well I thought I should at least suggest it.

Sounds like whoever set up the VLAN didn’t explain what they did which certainly doesn’t help.

Seems like you need to find out:

a) What the current setup is and acquire an understanding of it
b) What the new setup should be
c) Which new hardware makes best sense

If you want we could do a quick Teamviewer session to address a). I imagine it should only tale 10-15 mins and you would then have a full understanding of what you have.