cAP@F4:1E:57:XX:XX:XX%*b joined ... *b?

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

As mentioned in the title, the CAP displays the following message when connecting:

cAP@F4:1E:57:XX:XX:XX%*b joined

What does the "*b" mean?

Thanks, Richard

2

It's probably the .id of an interface, the interface where the host with that MAC address is connected too. You can find out what interface that can be by running this command in the Terminal:

:put [/interface get *b name]

or use this to have the list of all interfaces and their .id:

:foreach i in=[/interface find] do={ :put "$i -> $[/interface get $i name]" }

and look for the name associated with *b.

3

Indeed it is. I'd wish to have interface name instead.

So instead of

cAP@F4:1E:57:XX:XX:XX%*b joined

would be

cAP@F4:1E:57:XX:XX:XX%bridge joined

4

Yes, that’s the bridge’s ID, and yes, it would be nicer if the name were shown there :wink:

5

Whats really irritating is, for example such a log:

 2026-07-19 17:42:24 caps,info disconnected from capsman@36-7B-8E-E4-EE-B1%*5, failed to connect
 2026-07-19 17:42:26 interface,info ether1 link up (speed 1G, full duplex)
 2026-07-19 17:42:58 interface,info ether1 link down
 2026-07-19 17:43:05 interface,info ether1 link up (speed 1G, full duplex)
 2026-07-19 17:43:20 caps,info selected CAPsMAN capsman@36-7B-8E-E4-EE-B1%*5
 2026-07-19 17:43:20 caps,info connected to capsman@36-7B-8E-E4-EE-B1%*5

You see ether1 is down, the reason why cap was disconnected. But while you see ether1 as a name instead of .id, the caps topic messages use .id.
But I think it would be a BC break if they change it to use interface names instead. There are surely some scripts out there, parsing the log output and tokenizing these log messages and processing the parsed .id. If Mikrotik changes it to use names, I already see people complaining in the release topics.