Hi MT,
I have a couple of CHR’s inside my network that have no internet access, and never will have any internet access (even temporarily). I will be purchasing a license for each device (i.e. they are not free/trial licenses). What will happen when the license “deadline-at” expires?
Thanks,
Richard
You won’t be able to upgrade, but otherwise everything should work as before.
There is no point purchasing a licence as you will never be able to activate it without internet access.
You might as well use the free one.
Ok, I may have over-emphasised the “never” bit. I can give it internet during the setup and configuration, but once it goes live it’s offline.
Ok thanks.
On reflection, I could possibly failover the cluster and take each node out of service one at a time and give them internet access during a maintenance window. If I were to do this past the deadline date, would the upgrades suddenly start working again or do I need to blow away the VM and reinstall?
Cheers,
Richard
From fresh install CHR is slightly hindered, you will only get 1Mb in one direction but full speeds in the other.
Once you give it internet and assign it to your account it goes into trial mode (60 days) use. Once the 60 days runs out there is no detriment to the OS, it carries on working fine apart from you cannot upgrade the software package any further.
If you get it up, running, configured how you need and have all the functionality you require there is no reason to licence it. If an update ever came out you felt you needed/wanted then you would have to install a fresh CHR and migrate over or licence the one you had.
@richinuk: I didn’t try everything myself, I’m going mostly by what normis posted here in forum. I believe that the deadline is there only as simple way how to prevent you from activating unlimited clones, then blocking outgoing connections and using them for free forever. So if you allow it to connect to MikroTik servers in future, even past deadline, I assume it will work and unblock upgrades again.
New to CHR, do you mean after trial period CHR still works at full speed and full capabilities but no more way to upgrade ??
I hope nobody choose this last “tempting” option in an exposed router !!! (see latest security updates).
It would be like to buy a cheap Ferrari with option “cannot change worn tyres”…
Yes, it will keep working with full functionality, but will not allow upgrades. At least for now. Further restrictions could be added in time.
@normis: Just as an idea wouldn’t it be possible to integrate some kind of license generation tool over at mikrotik.com based on some sort of HW identifier which allows for manually importing the license file on the CHR? or is the case of “offline” routers too rare?
Good point
one way that I was thinking, is on the account portal on CHR management a button to generate some npk that need to be imported on the device.
or in the device, you have a button where you generate some verification code that you need to put on the Mikrotik portal and the portal will give an “answer code” to put back on the device to validate.
You just need install RouterOS from ISO image and activate with permanent RouterOS license.
e.g. L4
I also have this problem - CHRs with no Internet access. It would be nice to have a solution for this that doesn’t involve me wiping out these devices and re-installing them.