I downloaded the RouterOS demo yesterday (less than 24 hours ago). I’ve spent a few hours with it on an ESXi server, trying to get bridging working. Nothing doing - I can’t ping across the bridge no matter what; in fact, I can’t even ping the bridge IP itself from one side from a directly connected (virtual) PC. I can see all the machine’s MACs in the ARP table, but no ping. Weird So, wondering if it is because I’m on a virtual network in ESXi, I decided to wipe a real PC and put it on there.
Installed from the ISO from a CD (since the PC absolutely refused to boot from USB for some reason). First boot… “Demo has expired” and it shuts down. Oh come on… How do I get around that?
ETA: I was right about the virtual network anyway… I forgot to enable promiscuous mode on one of the switches (thought I had, but obviously not). D’oh! Still… why “Demo Expired” on the real hardware?