CCR2116-12G-4S+ dead, its a brick.

Hardware MikroTik hardware general
1

So a CCR2116-12G-4S+ which I got when it was new on the market, has died a sudden death.

Nothing on the console port. The lights come on for plugged in ports and all the SFP+ lights light up, but, they stay lit and never flicker. The fans come on at a slow pace. I tried both power supplies, they seem fine. It just does nothing.

Its like there is no BIOS or flash or something.

It came from a nice cool space. Was the main router at a house. It had a multigig copper SFP+ module for the connection to a modem. A SFP+ Directv attach cable to a big PoE switch. It had no ethernet plugged in.

It was running a simple SOHO config. Basic NAT & Firewall. Nothing hard at all. It was working for at least 4 years. Regular power cycles for good measure. Never a single issue.. all services turned off except winbox but at a different port # and not accessible from WAN. It had IPv6 enabled.

IT WAS RUNNING 7.16beta 7 tho

It was working but there were weird things that started to occur like a random page timeout. These started over a few hours. I hooked up to it with winbox, everything seemed fine. I rebooted it and that was that, it never came back up.

Consol is dead. I probed voltages, all seem fine.

As its well out of warranty, I figure I may hook up to some of its I2C ports and see if anything is going on that i can see..

Is there anyway to recover if even its BIOS seems corrupt ? There used to be a few pins you could short on the board to reset BIOS settings, but, I dont see any. Not that it would help tho as I dont have even console working.

I dont it just died hardware wise right ? That seems unlikely.

VERY weird. As I was running 7.16beta I figured I would post.

2

Try Netinstall procedure

https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Netinstall

3

Netinstall only works if it at least boots to BIOS. It does not appear to start anything as the console is dead.

I was going to simply switch to a second partition via console boot. But noooo…

Cant say I have ever tried netboot when I did not even get the BIOS start up options tho.. I do not think that port is even working. BUT I will try..

Yes Netboot would be a very routine way of recovery, been there many many times, but, I always had console and RS232 and I do not have those.

There is a dat code on the inside lid, 4/22/2021.. If its a hardware failure, 3 years is a bit short of what I would have expected.

4

Yep… Brick…

I gave it a go on Netinstall.. Nope.. Never shows in the list.. The port light for the boot port does flicker, but, no one is home. I checked and no data ever comes from it.

I decided to check other RS232 port speeds. Nope..

I popped it open and checked voltages at the regulators, they all seem to be happy with various voltages.

Yea it looks like it should go, but nope..

The next step would be to explore I2C busses, but, I don’t think that would help me without a serious knowledge of what is going on on them.

I suppose it could be some hardware fialure. CPU/ Ram/Flash.. But I cant fix that. If its boot code is toast, I dont know how to load that and even if I did, I would need to code to do it..

SO… I guess I will write this off.. I will check with Streakwave if there is some repair process..

This sucks. I really expected more then 3 years from a $1k router. Of course if it was some side affect from beta firmware, well, OK I am guilty. But man, beta just does not clobber things into bricks in my experience from Mikrotik..

5

That’s not possible unless your power supply died. The RouterBOOT has a backup which is loaded with the reset button. It can’t be overwritten by upgrades, it is always there. If you boot with the button pressed, it will boot via backup loader. Nothing can corrupt that.

EDIT: Re your second post. Yes, other HW failure could be possible, but that will not be related to upgrades in any way. Just a coincidence then. Submit to RMA for warranty replacement

6

Hi Normis,

So the hardware just died ? Damn. Well that is a bummer..

I get a replacement unit I purchased on wens. I will box up the dead one and do a RMA..

As Mikrotik products are just rock stable over decades, this was a surprize for me as I have been deploying Mikrotik, and only Mikrotik, for 14 years and they just pretty much never fail.

Yea its not running. No console, no User LED, no response to reset, no data comes out the boot eth.. Its dead..

Crazy it was working, but was a bit wonky and then fully died on a power cycle.

So no way something in the beta could have caused stress on parts or corruption that could lead to this total failure right ? It was just its time to die, hehehe..

Ive been running the same betas on a number of other devices and all is well. I am after the QoS stuff in 7.15 and 16. So I need the beta because i am deploying products that do AES67/Dante/Ravenna. So the recent PTP stuff was also VERY helpful for me. Once 7.16 goes stable, I will stay on stable and deploy in production.

7

I did contact Streakwave. As usual they are great to work with. They are working with me now to get this maybe fixed. It being out of warranty I am expecting some sort of repair ? I just have never had anything fail. Mikrotik products for me have been very reliable. So this is a new process for me.

8

You are probably getting into some kind of netinstall’s specific problems when it doesn’t want to detect your connected device (happens even with completely working devices).
Your best attempt will be following each suggestion for a netinstall (disabling firewall completely, running from an administrator account, disabling other network interfaces completely or even trying on a different OS/PC).

9

It’s like saying put your windows install CD into the CD-ROM drive to reinstall windows, when the PC doesn’t even POST.

10

Well I do netinstall all the time. So I know it well..

But in this case, there is nothing coming from the consol RS232 port. There is also ZERO data at all coming out of the boot port. It electrically comes alive, but there is never a packet.

But the console port having NO data coming out during boot is daming..

Well.. Streakwave has responded on my options.. I must say, I am disappointed :frowning:

I suppose its still cheaper then buying one.. But still..

Hello Chris,
Mikrotik repairs generally run $100-$250 plus shipping to Latvia. We will not know the cost of the repair until it has been sent to Latvia for inspection.

You would be responsible for shipping costs to/from Streakwave and from Streakwave to Mikrotik in Latvia. The process takes 2-3 months generally but can take longer.

Just want you to be aware of the reality of a Mikrotik paid repair. We handle very few of them because they are generally not worth the cost.

If you would like to proceed, please submit an RMA request on our website. Please make a note that the device is out of warranty and you are requesting paid repair.

11

YEP… Exactly… The lights are on, but no one is home..

12

I have now heard back from Mikrotik RMA and Streakwave RMA people..

The only way to get the most expensive products Mikrotik makes repaired out of warranty - even if its 1 day out of warranty - takes months and involves paying for a ton of shipping. Back and forth with Streakwave and then you have to pay international shipping costs for the unit both ways as well. As Streakwave told me, and Mikrotik confirmed, there is no way to reduce these costs and its so expensive no one gets anything repaired.

There is no US based repair facility.

If this was a 5+ year old device, OK, I guess thats OK. Maybe there might be a new product that is better I could sell the client. But in this case, at 3 years, its just throw away the defective unit and pay for a new one..

At 3 years I think this was a defective part. I dont think 3 years, 26,000 hrs, is a acceptable MTTF. I think Mikrotik should have at least tried to help me out in some way. But nooo…

SO I will tell the client to just toss out the unit. The buis where this was installed now has understandable concerns about using Mikrotik products.

So be aware. If a unit fails out of warranty, you just throw it away and buy another. There is no reasonable repair process, at least not here in the US.

13

Even then it is much cheaper then running cisco or juniper. HW failures happen. And the conditions are clear.

14

I would see if a local repair shop could repair or at least diagnose the issue.

If you don’t want to go that route, at least you have spare parts.