Control which IP address is displayed in Neighbor Discovery

RouterOS General
1

I have a CRS125 switch running RouterOS with two IP addresses configured on different interfaces:

#    ADDRESS         NETWORK      INTERFACE                 VRF 
;;; Gateway Smart Meter
0  S 192.168.1.1/24  192.168.1.0  ether15[ppc smart-meter]  main
1 D  10.10.10.19/25  10.10.10.0   main-bridge               main

The 192.168.1.1 address is required for a hardcoded smart meter gateway that cannot be reconfigured. The 10.10.10.19 address on main-bridge is my actual management IP for the switch.

When viewing this switch in Winbox's Neighbors tab (MNDP/LLDP discovery), it displays 192.168.1.1 instead of the management IP 10.10.10.19. According to the documentation, neighbor discovery shows "the highest IP address configured on a discovered device", which in this case is 192.168.1.1 (numerically higher than 10.10.10.19).

What I've tried

  • Setting discover-interface-list - this only controls which interfaces send/receive discovery packets, not which IPs are advertised
  • All IP addresses on the device are always advertised regardless of interface configuration
    Feature Request

Could MikroTik add a configuration option to specify which IP address should be preferred/displayed in neighbor discovery?

  1. A "management-ip" setting that overrides the "highest IP" default behavior
  2. Ability to exclude specific interfaces' IP addresses from neighbor advertisements
  3. Priority/weight system for IP addresses in discovery protocol

This is relevant for any multi-homed RouterOS device where the management interface isn't the numerically highest IP address, particularly when dealing with legacy equipment or fixed IP requirements on secondary networks.

Thank you for considering this enhancement.

2

Did you put the 192.168.1.1 address on a slave port? It looks like ether15[ppc smart-meter] is member of a bridge. Don't do that. You can simply remove the port ether15[ppc smart-meter] out of its current bridge and your problem will be solved. The port will become a standalone port with its own 192.168.1.1/24 address & subnet, independent of the main-bridge. You might need to also put the ether15[ppc smart-meter] in the LAN interface list if your firewall uses such interface list.

3

You are absolutely right, thank you, it works now!

4

Side note: If you have more IP assigned to the interface ROS tends to use the lowest IP it finds for it.