could not determine remote IP address error [SOLVED]

RouterOS General
1

EDIT: PLEASE SEE EDIT NOTE AT BOTTOM OF POST

Hi,

I’m a fairly newbie network technician at a local ISP. Basically, I’m two years into my CS degree, and until this job I’ve had no experience with networking outside of my own family’s internet. So I’m very green.

Anyway, the company is in the process of switching from a bridged networking scheme to routed networking (to implement PPPoE). I am trying to set up a test ground for the infrastructure. The test setup is as follows:

On a Gentoo Linux box, we have a confined, but functional FreeRadius server. I’ve added the appropriate tables, and added a username and password entry under radcheck. I have also added a few entries for that user in radreply, such as Framed-IP-Address, 123.456.7.99, which is part of the private non-routable IP group I’m testing on. As well as Framed-Protocol, which I gave listed as PPP since we’re switching to PPPoE, and Framed-Netmask, which is 255.255.255.0.

The clients.conf file has an entry for the public IP of the Mikrotik box, the private IP of the Mikrotik box, the IP of Local Area Connection #1 on a separte windows box I’m trying to test the PPPoE connection on, and Local Area Connection #2 on that same box.

The users file has a valid user/password and a friendly reply message for testing.

The radiusd.conf file is set up properly.

I’ve run radtest on the Gentoo box and get an Access-Accept message. Using NTRadPing on Windows, I also get a response from the radius server. All because I’m talking directly to the server.

Now here comes where I’m getting stuck: I set up a PPPoE connection on Windows, and I want Windows to talk to the Mikrotik box, which will authenticate with the radius server, send a go-ahead reply back to the Mikrotik box, and I will be granted access to the internet. But when I try to connect, WinBox_v3.3, the GUI I’m using to set up the Mikrotik box, gives me this error:

“cannot determine IP address of remote computer”

What remote computer is it talking about?

In PPP->PPoE Servers, I have a “service” on ether1, which uses all available authentication types.
In PPP->Secrets, I have MikrotikPublic set up with a secret, and Mikrotik Private with a secret - both use profile1
In PPP->Profiles, I have a profile1 which is all defaults
In IP->Addresses, I have two addresses, one for my main link and one for the link connecting the Mikrotik box to the network
In IP->Routes, I have two addresses, one for my main link and one for the link connecting the Mikrotik box to the network

I’m very lost, and not sure why I get that error above, so any help is appreciated. My end goal is to be able to connect using PPPoE.

-GPAC


EDIT:

I’ve been told that I might be on the wrong track. What I have been asked to find out is whether FreeRadius can, given a username and password, authenticate the user and send and IP address back to the NAS (Mikrotik box) and give that to the user.

2

if you use RADIUS, you do not need PPP->Secrets

3

Perfect! Holy smokes it actually works! laughs Made my day. Retrospectively, I guess it makes sense that you don’t need the Secrets stuff, since Radius is the thing authenticating the user, not the Mikrotik box.

The next step I want to do is actually get a connection to the internet. It connects, but I can’t get online, due to the IP address I gave myself in Radius being a non-routable, private IP. My supervisor suggests I look into the firewall settings on the Mikrotik box and mess with that a bit, so that’s what I’ll do. Thanks for your help. I’ll mark this topic as solved. :slight_smile:

4

just add Masquerade rule in Firewall → NAT

5

It also happened to me, maybe different reasons for the error, but I´m posting for anyone to help. In my case, I´ve configured different PPP profiles. One of the profiles has not assigned an IP pool, so all clients with this profile assigned were giving the “could not determine remote address, usin x.x.x.x”.