I have been using Mikrotik for years and slowly migrated most of my family to use it, but I am not a network person and generally only do the basics and often used wizard and default configs where possible. I am very comfortable on a Linux CLI but all at see on the Mikrotik console and so generally prefer the web GUI.
One problem that I have never been able to solve that I have made my 2025 new years resolution to solve and understand is that I am unable to upgrade my wifi extenders.
Setup
The setup is simple. One Mikrotik device as the main gateway and DHCP device and then one or more wifi extenders.
When using RouterOS 6 I used the auto setup wizard for creating an extender but since upgrading hardware and using RouterOS 7 I manually created a repeater setup on top of a default config using the RouterOS 6 setup as a reference to copy.
Problem
In both versions of my setups v6 and v7 the wifi extenders are unable to do updates. Its as if the device has no gateway but clients that connect via wifi can access the internet just fine.
The error I get is one of two versions connection timeout or DNS cant resolve. The timeout version seems to be on my v7 setup and the DNS error on my v6 setups.
The odd thing for me is that even if I take the router and plug in ether1 directly into the gateway device it still cant upgrade.
The DHCP Client and static IP’s seems to explain the difference between the two errors I have been getting (timeouts vs DNS).
After disabling the DHCP client on both bridges my error went from a timeout to Error: could not resolve dns name when trying to check for updated packages.
Routes now look like this.
Flags: D - DYNAMIC; A - ACTIVE; c - CONNECT
Columns: DST-ADDRESS, GATEWAY, DISTANCE
DST-ADDRESS GATEWAY DISTANCE
DAc 192.168.0.0/24 bridge1 0
DAc 192.168.1.0/24 bridge2 0
You have two routes towards “internet” through two different gateways (they are so-called ECMP routes, marked by the + sign), if (as I suspect) only one or the two is actually the gateway to the internet, this may create issues, as the router will choose the one or the other, but the main issue is that seemingly you have not configured the interface to the modem/router/internet (possibly ether1?):
/interface list member
add comment=defconf interface=bridge1 list=LAN
add comment=defconf > interface=ether1 list=WAN
In this configuration (With DHCP disabled and only the static addresses set to the bridges):
Flags: D - DYNAMIC; A - ACTIVE; c - CONNECT
Columns: DST-ADDRESS, GATEWAY, DISTANCE
DST-ADDRESS GATEWAY DISTANCE
DAc 192.168.0.0/24 bridge1 0
DAc 192.168.1.0/24 bridge2 0
you have no route to the “internet” at all, the two LAN routes, one for each bridge are DAc (Dynamic Active connected) and come from the two IP addresses you gave (manually) to the two bridges (and are fine).
You need to add a static route, through the interface that is actually connected to the router/modem/internet, possibly ether1, which right now has not even an Ip address, or add ether1 as dhcp client, or if one of the two bridges is connected “upstream”, then add only that one.
That solved it, I now understand both errors and how they happen and was able to upgrade the one networks wifi extenders and will do the others when next on site.
