Does resetting a Mikrotik RB411 to factory defaults wipe out the existing license?
(Turn power off and then short the reset half moons and then turn the power on and release the short after the LEDs start flashing.)
I read the article that says the RB411 comes with “level 3” license but it doesn’t say if a factory reset wipes out that license. https://routerboard.com/RB411
The word “reset” doesn’t show up even once in that license manual.
The license manual only mentions formatting or repartitioning or re-installing the router OS - but it says nothing about reset either way.
So the only question I have in this thread is if my RB411 originally had a license level of 4 or higher, would simply resetting the router back to factory defaults wipe out the level 4 or 5 or 6 license key back to the default level 3?
Or, is the licence completely unaffected by the reset procedure:
Simple configuration reset should never touch your existing license, no matter if it is the license your board was originally whipped with, or the one you applied to the board later. This applies to both reset by jumper/button and software-initiated reset. There are rare cases when the license is lost after the reset, but those are usually caused by hardware failure.
Have you considered buying a new device instead of upgrading the license on the existing board? RB411 is a rather old and somewhat slow board. There are newer and more powerful devices that have a price tag comparable to the license upgrade cost, so I would not have considered upgrading a license on the RB411 to be a good investment for myself.
Thank you for suggesting that the original license may have been wiped out when it may have been upgraded from a major Mikrotik RouterOS version.
The radio was given to me, for free, by a neighbor who had switched from one WISP (who used Mikrotik rooftop radios) to another WISP (who uses Ubiquiti rooftop radios).
The original (old) WISP told the neighbor to throw the equipment out so the neighbor gave it to me knowing that I have Ubituiti antennas all over my house!
Here is a picture, for example, of the radios at my feet, one of which is the Mikrotik RB411/R52n-M next to a Ubiquiti Bullet M2 HP with a 14dBi planar antenna.
Thank you for asking for further diagnostic information!
I don’t know if I have the RB411 radio set up properly for that test so first let me explain how it is currently set up:
My Netgear SOHO WiFi router is on IP address 192.168.1.1
I have a Windows XP computer at IP address 192.168.1.10 wired to that SOHO WiFi router.
I have the RB411/R52n-M at IP address 192.168.1.25 wired to that same SOHO WiFi router.
The RB411/R52n-M is also “connected” to one of my WiFi access points.
From Windows XP, I then log into the RB411 using WinBox software (WinBox v6.28 on RB411).
Here is a screen shot of that sequence using WinBox “v6.28 on RB411 (mipsbe)” on Windows with the RB411 set up as “CPE”.
PS: Does the “software ID” need to be blanked out (or is it a generic ID number)?
Notice that I don’t really know what I’m doing so I’m not sure if it’s correct to have the RB411 wired to the Netgear SOHO WiFi router at the same time that the R52n-M is connected to an access point on the Netgear SOHO WiFi router.
Did I do the requested test correctly? What do the results tell us?
Thank you for confirming that a reset to factory defaults should not wipe out any existing license.
The odd thing is that I searched and found the RouterOS documentation - but to my knowledge - the documentation does NOT state that simple fact!
So that’s why I had to ask you!
The reason I reset the radio to factory defaults is that it was given to me by a neighbor who had no further need for it since the neighbor switched WISP providers and I am familiar with Ubiquiti radios where the first thing you do is reset them to factory defaults so that you can log into them (192.168.20.1 ubnt/ubnt).
Had I known at the time that WinBox could access the radio or that there even existed the CONCEPT of a license (which AirOS doesn’t have!) then I probably would not have reset the device to factory defaults as the first thing I did!
I am trying to READ the files on the RB411 but I can’t see to figure out how to READ what these files say!
You don’t need “Update license key” function. It is only used when upgrading from a veeeeeeeeery old RouterOS versions (8 year old 3.23 or earlier). According to your screenshots you are running 6.28 and there are no problems with the license (you do have a valid one), so this function is a no-op for you.
Software ID is what your license is bound to. If you manage to change or wipe it out you will loose your license. And when I say “loose the license” I mean it- it will not be magically reverted to the factory shipped one, but completely removed, which means your device will start to operate on a Level 0 license.
Should it? What’s the point in documenting things that are not supposed to happen?
You haven’t done anything wrong. Your board was shipped with L3 license by default, it was used as a CPE, so there were no need in upgrading the license. What makes you think it was at a level higher then 3 before you’ve got it?
By the way, you seem to have a backup available. You can try to restore from it to see how your board used to be configured.
Thanks. I was just running “Update License” because someone asked me to tell them what it says.
I’m not sure if it actually connects anyway because it always says “failed” in the end.
I redacted the letters in the “Software ID” in the screen shot above because I was not sure if it was unique to my radio.
My main concern was that maybe the original WISP had a higher level license on this radio (since level 3 doesn’t allow much power).[/b
]Is there any way to tell from the files that are on the radio if it ever had a higher level licence before?
Or can you tell from the data whether level 3 the only license this radio has ever had?
Thank you for the suggestion to obtain newer equipment.
My neighbor switched from one WISP (using Mikrotik) to another (using Ubiquiti) where my WISP only uses Ubiquiti equipment (so I have a lot of spare Ubiquiti radios lying around which were easy to set up as access points wired to the SOHO router).
The old WISP told the neighbor to throw the stuff out, so the neighbor gave me both his RB750 router and his rooftop radio as shown in this photo taken just now for you.
I have never touched Mikrotik equipment until today, and I watched about twenty videos on youtube, almost all of which were at Mikrotik conferences so they were far too detailed for me, where a lot of the videos were in some foreign language (very very very few Mikrotik videos outside the Mikrotik conferences were in intelligible English).
Even most of the posts I found on this site and on other sites were not in intelligible English - so I very much appreciate your help and advice as this Mikrotik equipment seems more for professionals than laymen like I am.
Thank you for the advice on the price-to-value of the RB411 level 4 license.
My only intention is to find a use for the free RB750 router and the free RB411/R52n-M transceiver.
Since I have often set up access points tied to my SOHO router using Ubiquti equipment, I at first thought it would be EASY to do the same with this transceiver like I did this Ubiquiti Bullet M2 HP connected to a 14dBi planar antenna.
But apparently either I wiped out the WISP higher-level license that may have been there (but probably not based on the answers here) or the RB411 never had a higher license than level 3.
So now I’m just trying to figure out WHAT I can do with a spare RB750 router and a spare RB411/R52n-M radio!
At the moment, I don’t have many spare Ethernet ports left. What would you do with this equipment in a pretty typical household where I have:
Transceiver: WISP rooftop Ubiquiti Rocket M5 with 30dBi Rocketdish
SOHO Router is a typical Netgear WiFi router
Attached to that router is a typical switch (all ports filled)
Attached to the SOHO router is a wired extension router (typical Linksys WRT54G spare router that everyone has)
Attached to all the routers and switches are access points (spare Ubiquiti radios set up as access points)
Also attached are various computers, VOIP connections, etc.
What use would you make of the free gift of a Mikrotik RB750 router and a Mikrotik RB411/R52n-M transceiver with a level 3 license?
License level has no impact on power.
While it was used as client station it pretty much for sure never had any higher license level than 3. Why don’t you believe so?
By the way. Very nice metal box with quick guide inside. It is very rare to see something like that.
Start slowly. Read manual and think about what you are going to change on the configuration. You have great opportunity to move forward with those two routerboards, even you will not be able to run ap on the 411. It’s not the only thing… You can use the rb750 as your main router and the 411 as a link to your neighbor for mutual connectivity backup.
Of you can sell it. You can ger around usd60 for all of it.
I completely understand your point of view because I worked in software development and support for decades!
I have a DIFFERENT point of view - but I completely understand your point of view (and that’s OK).
In my case, I used to run a team of customer support people and our motto was to ALWAYS DOCUMENT whenever a CUSTOMER ever had a QUESTION!
We had an entire synchronized system set up, where when a customer called in for technical support, we answered their question, and if the question and answer was NOT in the documentation, we handed it to the “tech pubs” people and told them to PUT it in the documentation.
The leader of the technical publication department and I were completely synchronized, since tech pubs KNEW that for every question that is asked, there are a thousand where people just gave up because they couldn’t FIND the answer - and so they gave up. Having people give up is bad for business. Much better for customers to look in the documentation and learn that, over time, they ALWAYS find the answers to very basic and obvious questions that have been asked before.
Our rule was that if ONE customer asked the question, there were a THOUSAND out there who just gave up.
While very few companies follow that rule, our rule was that EVERY QUESTION EVER ASKED had an answer in the documentation (if possible).
I do understand your rebuttal, which is that you suspect that nobody would ask such a question - but we’re not omnipotent. Since I have familiarity only with Ubiquiti equipment, it never occurred to me that there even was this concept of a “license” level of support. I never had such a problem setting up a half dozen Ubiquiti transceivers as “Access Points”.
In fact, I was astounded that the Mikrotik equipment (which I was told was “professional equipment”) couldn’t do something as simple as become an Access Point.
Then I slowly realized that the license level was the problem - and that the equipment was set to the default license level of level 3.
*So my first worry was that I had somehow DELETED the original license.
*
Apparently, from this discussion, there was no way that a simple factory reset would have caused the deletion of the license, and, even so, if the license had been deleted due to a hardware failure of some sort, then it would have reverted to license level 0.
In my defense, I did LOOK in the documentation, which, as noted, only talked about flashing major versions of the firmware.
I think the FAQ I found on the Mikrotik web site should have a SIMPLE factual FAQ:
Q: Can resetting the firmware cause the license to be removed?
A: No.
(Or something like that.)
Thank you very much for your patience in understanding that I am brand new (1 day) to Mikrotik but not new to setting up transceivers as Access Points.
Since it was so EASY to set up a half dozen Ubiquiti radios as access points, I just ASSUMED it would be as easy to set up the Mikrotik as an Access Point.
Worse, the documentation for setting up Mikrotik radios as access points FORGETS TO MENTION that license level 4 or higher is required.
Even the error was wrong, in that the error said I needed license level 6!
And there was NOTHING about this in the step-by-step documentation I found for how to set up the Microtik as an Access Point.
The only documentation about the license level was found when I looked up the error and when it was pointed out to me that the default RB411 license level is 3.
But I should mention that there was NO CONNECTION to the step-by-step tutorials, which just ASSUMED we had the correct license level!
The problem, really, was my own making in that it never occurred to me that a professional piece of CPE equipment could NOT act as an Access Point, out of the box!
Thank you very much for that advice!
And thank you for noticing that there seems to be the following files on my Mikrotik transceiver:
auto-before-reset.backup, Jan 01 1970
autosupout.rif, Feb 11 2016
I clicked on each of them and hit the buttons but so far I am unable to “read” them. Should I just hit the “restore” button instead of trying to read them?
Thank you for clarifying my statement on “power”, where I completely understand your point, which is that the Mikrotik transceiver has the “power” to be set up as an access point; it just doesn’t have that “power” at the default out-of-the-box license level.
I am brand new to Mikrotik (1 day) where I have only watched a dozen videos since all I have done, so far, is try to set up the transceiver as an access point wired to my router as I have set up these Ubiquiti radios as access points.
I can see a HUGE difference between the Ubiquiti radios and the Mikrotik radios, in that Mikrotik will sell a board (which is kind of neat) while I don’t think Ubiquiti does that, and, Mikrotik RouterOS software is very powerful in that it has a LOT of settings (far more than do the Ubiquiti AirOS radios!).
So while it was completely unexpected, I think the Mikrotik equipment may be more powerful, in the end (with the proper licenses) than the Ubiquiti radios!
Thank you for asking why I thought that the radio must have had the ability to be an access point.
I was wrong but you set me straight so I appreciate your answers!
I apologize that am new to WISP (about six months) where I have set up Ubiquiti transceivers as access points, which did not require the concept of a “license”. It just never occurred to me that a “license” was needed to UNLOCK that power in the Mikrotick equipment.- since I never heard of such a thing in my six months on Ubiquiti equipment!
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Thank you for noticing the quality of the installation by the prior WISP. He’s a great guy, as I had him in the past also.
Both the old WISP and the new WISP are great guys.
The old WISP is all Mikrotik and the new WISP is all Ubiquiti.
This new WISP is taking a lot of the old WISP’s customers, one by one - simply because he’s got far better pricing (about half the cost), which is just too good to pass up.
I like the way you think!
Right now I have the rooftop 5GHz Rocket M2 with 30dBi antenna as my transceiver, which first goes into my Ooma Telo (for QOS reasons) and then into my Netgear SOHO router whose 4 Ethernet ports are filled so I also have a TrendNET four-port switch whjich is also filled (printer, Skype phone, computers, cellular nanotower, etc.) where one cable goes to a spare Linksys WRT54G router which itself has a few Ubiquiti access points hanging off of it by wire.
I have never sold anything in my life. I’m not greedy enough!
I never even sold a car in my entire life. I always give them away for free.
The good news is that people give me free stuff all the time also.
That’s how I got these Mikrotik routers and transceivers!
I had helped my neighbor when his Ubiquiti radio blew down in a storm … I came over with a J arm and a spare Ubiquiti radio, and we saved his old configuration file and loaded into the new radio, and he was up and running well before the WISP would have been there (the WISP kindly gave me the login credentials). We all work together out here in the mountains, were there are no pipes or wires other than electricity and telephone (but most of us have our own cellular towers inside the house and VOIP instead of landlines). We’re too far for DSL, so our choices are WISP or Satellite. Most of us choose WISP over satellite for the obvious reasons (we only have Huges and Xfiniti as satellite choices).
Anyway, my main goal now is to find a good use for the free Mikrotik RB750 router and RB411/R52n-M radio transceiver so any ideas you have to put them to a good use are welcome!
For the .backup file- yes. As to the .rif file- I guess you can safely delete that file now. And, by the way, you can copy those file to your computer by simply dragging-and-dropping them from the WinBox window.
Thank you for that advice to use “power” as transmit power (as in field strength!).
You are correct that in transceiver terms, power is generally understood to be in terms of measurable decibels, so I’ll try to use it that way moving forward.
So far, what I love is that the “potential functionality” of the Mikrotik RouterOS seems to be fantastic (compared to the potential functionality of Ubiquiti AirOS).
What I don’t like is that almost all my transceivers are set up as access points, which I can’t do out of the box with this RB411.
I’m still trying to figure out what I can do with the RB411/R52n-M - to make it useful …
What I might do is set it up as a WiFi receiver for a desktop computer (to replace the wifi card in the desktop - but really - it’s too big in size for that).
Thinking for some use to make of it, I may try to set it up as a receiver at the barn, which is about 300 feet from the house, where there is power, um, 120VAC electricity, so I can put the RB750 there, with the RB411/R52n-M wired to it, and that should give me Internet in the barn!
Thank you for clarifying that the backup file is the one that I would want to try first.
I already clicked in it yesterday - but now I can’t connect anymore to the RB411/R52n-M transceiver.
I think I’m on the wrong subnet now because WinBox sees nothing now.
I think I may have to reset the transceiver back (again) to factory defaults.
When I try to connect to the 192.168.1.x subnet, it no longer fined the radio:
So, what I think is happening is the following:
The original IP address from the previous WISP must have been IP address 10.211.1.13.
WinBox won’t connect because my WinXP computer is on 192.168.1.x
But - I thought WinBox could find its RB411 device by its MAC address!
But that didn’t happen.
So I’ll just reset the RB411 back to factory defaults and start over.
Thank you for that advice as it wasn’t obvious how to save the old setup so that I could then save the new setup. This Mikrotik stuff seems to be super powerful - but not intuitive!
I think I already set the radio back to the original setup - and now I can’t log in (which makes sense) so I will have to reset it to factory defaults
(I thought the WinBox utility was able to “find” the device by its MAC address … but it doesn’t seem to find it … maybe because the Windows computer is on the 192.168.1.x subnet?)
I think we can set this thread to SOLVED because the question and answer are done.
Q: Does resetting the RB411 to factory defaults wipe out the existing license?
A: No.
To test it again, I reset the RB411 and set it up again and the L3 license remained as it was.
The WinBox “loader” v2.2.18 located the RB411 with RouterOS v6.28 on the subnet by MAC address
For whatever reason, WinBox came in on a different port this time - instead of port 8291, it used port 20561:
The only error when it connectred was a strange “Timeout while waiting for program 24”
I was able to remove the “default configuration” and the license remained at Level 3:
After removing the default configuration, it still logged into the RB411 by MAC address just fine at port 20561:
It connected to one of the access points attached to my router just fine over WiFi:
One odd thing it did though was try to download “plugins” from somewhere, which was an unexpected surprise for me:
After doing that, whatever those plugins did, it could easily see the half dozen access points I have scattered about my house:
I did try to read the backed up backup and RIF files but they were all in some sort of binary format so they were unreadable:
And I restored the previous files and rebooted but nothing changed with respect to the license still being just a level 3 license!
So, I think I proved to myself that there’s really nothing I could have done to the license.
It was level 3 when the RB411 was born - and it’s still level 3 now!
Being an L3 license, it could be used as a remote CPE to connect to your APs, or by using another radio, (which can also be L3), set a point to point connection.
L3 can be used as AP (for a single station) by setting wireless mode=bridge (insterad of ap-bridge), and the other one as station-bridge. You will be building a transparent L2 link, the same as if you layed out a cable.
