We currently have a network that spans over a river. We used to have a single link between the building but when a ship passes or berths inline the link drops. So we have put in a second link that goes further down river to a pole and then on again to building 2.
Currently we have to swap the link manually when the first link goes down.
The network is all on the same IP range,
We need something that can stop traffic going down link 2 unless the link 1 is down.
Is there anyway that with a mikrotik router we can automate this?
you can do this with spanning tree, on the current gear (if it’s supported - it should be supported) or with STP (spanning tree protocol) on mikrotik routers, or even better, with OSPF and BFD with mikrotik routers. There are various tutorials on how to do that, including in the wiki.
This will not work as Mikrotik does not implement NHRP protocol, as that is required for mGRE tunnels to work. You will have to use point-to-point GRE tunnels between Cisco and Mikrotik gear. Also, Mikrotik does not implement EIGRP protocol, so even if you would get mGRE running, you would still have no possibility to exchange routes with your peer. Just get a refurbished Cisco 1841 for around 100$ to do that for you.
faizan, get out of cisco schemes, there’s no need of GRE tunnels or routing.
OP needs a L2 network with two links… rSTP will do the trick. Priorize the main link over the backup link and it will disable link2 unless link1 is down. STP and Rapid STP are standard protocols supported from every smart switch or router.
If you want to make it fancy, you can set OSPF between routers and VPLS/MPLS (or GRE/EoIP tunnel to make faizan happy) to ensure L2 link.
