Configure Mikrotik 493AH for a hotspot and admin the Antenna

Hello all.

I’m struggling to configure a hotspot and an admin network with the Mikrotik RouterBoard 493AH, RouterOS 4.10.

(Didn’t see anything related to this or similar in the change log to 4.11, so I didn’t upgrade)

My Scenario is pretty simple:

(INTERNET) <--cable--> (Mikrotik) <--cable--> (Wifi Antenna) <--wireless--> (Hotspot Wifi clients)

I need to be able to provide Internet to the clients, but also to be able to access the “Wifi Antenna” through it’s admin ip.

So, I decided to assign two public ip’s to the wan interface (ether1), and an additional internal ip to the hotspot interface (ether2) (different networks).

The hotspot NAT rules where defined with Winbox and I defined special NAT rules to be able to access the internal “Wifi Antena” from one of the public ip’s.

I have two problems:
a) If the hotspot ip rules are enabled (/ip hotspot enable hotspot2), I cant even ping the “Wifi Antenna”, but it works if the rules are disabled. I can’t find out why. How could I configure both networks in the same interface (or not), but all in the same mikrotik?

b) When I configured the hotspot with WinBox I selected to masquerade the internal ip’s also, so the clients received weird ip’s instead of the ones I defined in the pool, and it’s not working that way now. It now assigns the clients exactly the ip’s of the pool. How could I configure that it gives weird ip’s to the hotspot clients again without erasing the current configuration and starting from scratch?

I’m pretty new to this devices. I hope I’m not asking questions too dumb.

I have been searching the forums for help, but haven’t found (almost) anything useful. Maybe I haven’t been using the right set of words to search for. Please excuse me if this has been discussed already.

I have been struggling with this for two weeks now.

Any help to solve any one or both my current problems will be really appreciated.

Bellow I show the relevant configuration, and other things I’ve tried.

Thanks a lot.

Ely


/ip address print
------------------------------------------------------------------
Flags: X - disabled, I - invalid, D - dynamic
 #   ADDRESS            NETWORK         BROADCAST       INTERFACE
 0   ;;; Place: (hotspot2) (public ip)
     XX.XX.XX.12/24    XX.XX.XX.0     XX.XX.XX.255   ether1
 1   ;;; Admin (public ip)
     XX.XX.XX.11/24    XX.XX.XX.0     XX.XX.XX.255   ether1
 2   ;;; Hotspot
     192.168.Y.1/24     192.168.Y.0     192.168.Y.255   ether2
 3   ;;; Admin to Wifi Antenna
     192.168.Z.254/24  192.168.Z.0    192.168.Z.255  ether2



/ip hotspot print
------------------------------------------------------------------
Flags: X - disabled, I - invalid, S - HTTPS
 #   NAME                      INTERFACE                     ADDRESS-POOL                     PROFILE                     IDLE-TIMEOUT
 0   hotspot2                  ether2                        hs-pool-2                        hsprof1                     5m



/ip firewall nat print
------------------------------------------------------------------
Flags: X - disabled, I - invalid, D - dynamic
 0 X ;;; place hotspot rules here
     chain=unused-hs-chain action=passthrough

 1   chain=dstnat action=dst-nat to-addresses=192.168.Z.11 dst-address=XX.XX.XX.11

 2   chain=srcnat action=src-nat to-addresses=XX.XX.XX.11 src-address=192.168.Z.11

 3   ;;; masquerade hotspot network
     chain=srcnat action=masquerade src-address=192.168.Y.0/24

EDIT: forgot to add the routing table

/ip route print
Flags: X - disabled, A - active, D - dynamic, C - connect, S - static, r - rip, b - bgp, o - ospf, m - mme,
B - blackhole, U - unreachable, P - prohibit
 #      DST-ADDRESS        PREF-SRC        GATEWAY            DISTANCE
 0   S  0.0.0.0/0                          XX.XX.XX.254      1
 1 ADC  192.168.Y.0/24     192.168.Y.1     ether2             0
 2 ADC  192.168.Z.0/24    192.168.Z.254  ether2             0
 3 ADC  XX.XX.XX.0/24     XX.XX.XX.12    ether1             0

Among other things, I tried to define the admin network in ether3 and plugged an external switch to ether2, ether3 and the antenna. That worked. The problem is I need to do this solution for over 45 places. I’m sure there should be a better way to do it.

So, I tried to define some switched ports instead of the external switch. Like this:


/interface ethernet print
------------------------------------------------------------------
Flags: X - disabled, R - running, S - slave
 #    NAME                         MTU   MAC-ADDRESS       ARP        MASTER-PORT                        SWITCH
 0    ether1                       1500  00:0C:42:51:74:F9 enabled
 1    ether2                       1500  00:0C:42:51:74:FA enabled    none                               switch1
 2    ether3                       1500  00:0C:42:51:74:FB enabled    none                               switch1
 3  S ether4                       1500  00:0C:42:51:74:FC enabled    ether3                             switch1
 4  S ether5                       1500  00:0C:42:51:74:FD enabled    ether3                             switch1
 5    ether6                       1500  00:0C:42:51:74:FE enabled    none                               switch1
 6    ether7                       1500  00:0C:42:51:74:FF enabled    none                               switch1
 7    ether8                       1500  00:0C:42:51:75:00 enabled    none                               switch1
 8    ether9                       1500  00:0C:42:51:75:01 enabled    none                               switch1

I plugged an UTP cable from ether2 to ether3, and the “Wifi Antenna” in ether4, but that doesn’t work… the hotspot dhcp doesn’t offer addresses.

I also tried a hotspot nat rule like this in order to masquerade all but petitions going form the admin public ip:

 3   ;;; masquerade hotspot network
     chain=srcnat action=masquerade src-address=192.168.Y.0/24 dst-address=!XX.XX.XX.11

But nothing changed.

There must be a NAT rule for the hotspot that doesn’t collide with the administration ones. I’m sure, but can’t find out how to do it.

Thanks again.

Ely.

I don’t understand why I didn’t find information abot my first problem before:

a) If the hotspot ip rules are enabled (/ip hotspot enable hotspot2), I cant even ping the “Wifi Antenna”, but it works if the rules are disabled. I can’t find out why. How could I configure both networks in the same interface (or not), but all in the same mikrotik?

But finally I got it working thanks to SurferTim (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=29512&p=144138#p144138):

I think I may have an answer. If you are trying to get through the hotspot interface to an ap or server behind the hotspot, you need to bypass the mac or ip of that device, or the hotspot blocks any replies.
/ip hotspot ip-binding
add mac-address=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx type=bypassed
or
add address=192.168.x.x type=bypassed

In my previous attempts to use the “bypassed rules” I was using the wrong ip’s like this:

/ip hotspot ip-binding add address=XX.XX.XX.11 to-address=192.168.Z.11 type=bypassed

I now ussed only the AP’s ip, and that was all:

/ip hotspot ip-binding add address=192.168.Z.11 type=bypassed

I write all this hoping to help someone lost as I was.

Now I only want to find a way to solve my second problem: “To hide the clients from each other and from the hotspot server (MT)”

I guess it should be better to create a new post with a more adequate title

Thank’s anyway.

Ely.

For problem number 2. If the Hotspot is only running on Ether2 and you have a whole layer2 network connected to that (switches, access points, etc.) then it is up to you to set up those edge devices with that security and user isolation. Access points will often have a client isolation mode, and managed switches will often have VLANs or port isolation. If your access points/switches do not support these things, then you cannot do what you want. Since the MikroTik does not directly control what is going on at the edge of the network, it cannot isolate users from each others. This is the same restriction that every layer3 device will always have.