With that I agree, if you are network administrator you know what are you doing (probably) and it’s easier for them to understand what to do if they are working with ROS for the first time for but what in case of the home users ?
You must admit that ROS is not by any means home user friendly.
It is not, that’s why home user can use “MikroTik Home” app, or rely on the ISP to configure their device. Some mobile operators don’t even allow access to RouterOS to home users. The strength comes in the feature set the ISP has available, not on user friendliness.
For eg. in Croatia I’ve never seen ISP to give out Mikrotik devices for home users, business customers yes but home users gets some router that was the cheapest for ISP, you get instructions on how to change your password, SSIDs and you get your credentials to access your router. (of course not admin access)
Here your SSID and password is your problem, not ISP problem. What is with customer that buy Mikrotik in store ? Feature rich device and then home app that looks great but have limited functionality ?
What would I consider is to maybe make quickset a little bit more functional, some of the suggestions:
VLAN manager of some sort, option to use or not to use VLANs, if yes then open VLAN wizard where VLAN ID, IP, do you want for VLAN to be accessible from other VLANs if there is any and ports that user want’s to use and then device create routes, FW rules, ip pool, dhcp server etc.
Add BTH to quick set, don’t let users wander around ROS to turn on this feature.
Maybe consider adding some CAPsMAN wizard ?
Croatia is one country, there are some more countries. And also, why not? Maybe you should ask the LTE provider to give you Chateau, not Re-Labeled noname brand.
maybe make quickset a little bit more functional, some of the suggestions:
- VLAN manager of some sort, option to use or not to use VLANs
and others complain that quickset is already too complex for home user
Yea… in that case they will provide you with SIM card if possible and tell you that you can buy your own router. You get Huawei from them if you are lucky…
Regarding Quickset, i can’t say it’s complicated but will break stuff if you mess with quick set and then you go and mess with config.
For eg. Local network:
-ditch netmask, dhcp and nat option, there are great chances that home user will not know what that is, and you need that by default and netmask leave as /24.
When user wants to change subnet, when they input their wanted IP address quickset should do all necessary task behind the scene. (I would add notification if they want to use IP address that is not in private address range) Don’t know what does now as I don’t ever use quickset.
It’s not possible to create VLAN setup as you have for DHCP server ?
Well, it is both “too complex” for SOHO. But QuickSet is how I workaround the “configuration abstraction complexity”, at least for LTE devices. I view more as a way to have “configuration template” to a custom defconf. But not sure an “improved QuickSet” does not really address @DarkNate’s main complaints, as they don’t involve setup.
I do think @DarkNate has an excellent point that may be getting lost here & is not a SP problems:
1.
configuration of bridge VLANs/VLANs in general etc are easy just like Juniper, Cisco, Nokia etc? misconfig doesn’t lead to performance issues (issue unknowingly routing/bridging traffic through CPU)."
Hit the nail on the head. I know how bridging works… but if was a given a random Mikrotik model, I’d have to re-read many pages to confirm what’s possible (and likely still have search the forum because something still may not be clear). And with L3HW becoming more common on devices, this problem gets even more complex on “what optimal”.
e.g. not easy to know what feature/config is causing the “H” not to appear in the bridge, or if it’s even possible to achieve.
Now on this one…
2.
Not sure the issue here is the protocols themselves… Mikrotik does have a JSON API via REST. But even if config was represented in protobufs used by gRPC, not sure that alone help anything.
Issue is all protocols go back to the same basic “add”, “set”, “remove” operations on the router. So if you have some file with desired VLAN/subnet/prefix/whatever for you network… you cannot just “apply it” (e.g. add/remove missing ones, leave rest alone, etc.) – it take scripting (and same via REST/API) using same “if exist(…) { set … } else { add …}” as CLI. And you run into the lack of “transactions” to be able to “rollback” a change if there was an error. e.g. “Safe Mode” is only a winbox concept.
So easy to see the SP/DC problem since it hard to automate without some “update” primitive that either add a new item, or set an existing item in ONE operation. e.g. you have a CSV/XLS/JSON/YAML list, that may get updated over time, it potential 2-3 different API calls today if you want to make sure all items match what’s configured.
But overall I do like the RouterOS database-like model of config (e.g. everything is a table) vs. some file-based config system. And think it’s good design that there is no root access – although that does pose problem if things are broken – not sure it help fix anything with RouterOS since there aren’t even any posix tools/etc install…
I like all this talk about Nokia, Cisco, Juniper etc.
But, MikroTik is routing the world.
Never forget.
I am still trying to add up the math… 
quote: "DarkNate
_@jaclaz
I will be at IETF next month, will you ?
It would be good to meet up.
No, I live in economies that are far away from most IETF events. But have fun, and maybe try to get MikroTik employees to go there instead. They never participated in the IETF since 1997.
Hi,
For those who are interested, since the issue of including the WAN port in the same bridge is discussed (although I don’t know if it is in this topic).
Ask support about vlan configuration on L009 and RB5009:
Both the RB5009 and L009 block diagram shows that the SFP port plugs directly into the integrated marvell switch.
To get full performance, should the SFP port be used as a WAN on the bridge? Or should a layer 3 vlan be created on the SFP and not included in the bridge?
The internet is received from the ISP in vlan20.
So this is the right thing to do? Setting 1:
/interface bridge
add frame-types=admit-only-vlan-tagged name=BDI100 port-cost-mode=short protocol-mode=none pvid=99 vlan-filtering=yes
/interface bridge port
add bridge=BDI100 comment=PC01 frame-types=admit-only-untagged-and-priority-tagged interface=ether1 pvid=2
...
add bridge=BDI100 comment=WAN frame-types=admit-only-vlan-tagged interface=sfp1 pvid=20 --> WAN PORT
/interface bridge vlan
add bridge=BDI100 tagged=BDI100,sfp1 vlan-ids=20 --> WAN VLAN ISP
Or this other? Setting 2:
/interface vlan
add interface=sfp1 name=vlan20 vlan-id=20
// Not included SFP on bridge with LAN ports
Thanks
Regards,
Support response:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting MikroTik Support.
In terms of performance, both setups should offer similar throughput since they both involve VLAN tagging and handling. However, if you anticipate heavy WAN traffic or specific QoS requirements, you might need to test both setups to determine which one performs better in your environment.
Best regards,
Regards,
It gets even worse and more confusing, see below:
http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/v7-14rc-testing-is-released/173569/1
This is exactly why MikroTik needs to overhaul the source code of RouterOS from scratch (perhaps time re-write in Rust?) and fix the configuration implementation logic from the hardware level, upto userspace level. To ensure consistent config and documentation across all modern CCR, CRS and RB hardware with Marvell ASICs.
There’s no “consistency” of config on MikroTik. I’ve seen “less” of config consistency problem on Juniper, and from the looks of things, Nokia SR Linux doesn’t have this problem either.
Mikrotik is very good at making hardware and software products for people that do not have access to “Wall Street Funding”. Mikrotik will never be Cisco, Juniper or other “Enterprise” Vendors.
Please continue the adventure into networking that is very affordable for the masses.
Thank You
@darknate: Resources: Engineering Management ( besides the academics of maths, physics, statistics-probability, electrical, programming, chemistry, drawing, thermodynamics etc…)
All old text books circa 1980s LOL
PRODUCTION/OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT: Concepts Structure & Analysis → Richard J Tersine 1980
ENGINEERING ECONOMICS → James L. Rigg 1977
Management ( and accompanying Study Guide & Workbook ) → James F. Stoner 1978
Information Systems: Theory and Practice -->: John G Burch Jr, Felix R. Strater, Gary Grudnitski 1979
Maintenance Replacement and Reliability → AKS Jardine 1973
Measurement Systems: Application and Design → Ernest O. Doebelin 1975
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING HANDBOOK: Third Edition H.B Maynard 1971
INTRODUCTION TO OPERATIONS RESEARCH: Third Edition Hillier and Lieberman 1980
HUMAN FACTORS IN ENGINEERING DESIGN: Fifth Edition Ernest J. McCormick, Mark S Sanders 1982
RELIABILITY IN ENGINEERING DESIGN → KC Kapur, LR Lamberson 1977
At which time Latvia was still part of Soviet Union. So those western (US in particular) books were probably banned … or at least ignored because Soviet communism did things differently.
So it might be that all of these concepts are somehow unknown to MT management.
Funny that, today I was watching one of my favourite youtube distractions, losing my self in the world of “Bald & Bankrupt” .
Today I learned about Tajikistan! Good thing they left the USSR otherwise Voldemort would have pulled all the able bodied men to fight in Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBBiFhhY2to
Many industry folks (outside Latvia) are of the opinion that MikroTik operates using Soviet economic/business model and that’s their major bottleneck. The facts and timeline of Latvia<>USSR seems to indicate that MikroTik never adapted 21st century business model nor engineering management.
Any 2020-2024 edition of these books? I’m sure the authors have updated some of them. 2024 tech business is vastly different to what it was in 1980.
It’s often very hard to get rid of some mental petterns if they are given (or enforced) to a few generations in a row.
One of them is “USA are the greatest in known Universe in all aspects” mentality, deeply engraved in majority of US population.
Unfortunately, that’s the reality of humanity as a whole.
USA is great for getting paid, with the right plan. $10k for NAT configuration on a MikroTik lol. Stupid American enterprises are good cash cows, because they’ll pay $$$$ for something as simple as BGP route filter configuration. Idiots could do it for free if they Googled, but nope.