In complex configs it would be beneficial if RouterOS could support names for IP addresses rather than bare IPs. While address lists is a similar feature, it doesn’t address the all-too-common scenario where only a single address is allowed (and expected!). My current use case would include assigning IPs in DHCP and using them in very narrow firewall rules (e.g. in NAT).
While in some places address lists can be used, this is also introducing a performance penalty + adding 30 address lists creates a mess.
I saw other users asking about that before, but in a wider scope:
except it does not help in cases, when you have multiple ip forwarding rules to the servers behind firewall, and want to manage server changes with one, ip alias change, instead of changing multiple rules in the firewall. not sure what is exactly making the implementation of that feature impossible, because i remember requests for that being done for ages now, and yet we are where we are.
I’m talking about scenario, where you have mutiple nat rules (for example) forwarding to the same ip address, since it is same machine providing a multitude of services, think like web, ftp, mail, etc. etc. (there are more ports, protocols in my case, but for the sake of simplicity…), so you have to provide THAT ip address as a destination “to-addresses”. it is good, in case where the “environment” is static, not many servers, services provided by each machine is also constant. but, in my case services can migrate, which does not require aliases, since one service - one rule, but also servers themselves can migrate, and that is a multitude of services, hence multitude of rules. yes, it is possible to change the ip address for the new machine, if the machine is local, but another option would be to change the ip address in the alias, and that would change multitude of rules in “one click”, and that would be especially nice, in cases where you not only have to redirect all the services to local server, but (for example) to the hot standby server, which is geographically distant, and has some static ip, which you can not change. To put it into more compact form, ip == machine, alias == role, machine != role. so, aliases are all about the roles management efficiency.
I would also greatly appreciate this feature. In my specific case, I want to use it for an adguard server which I have set to a static IP. I want to be able to make an alias for that IP so that I can define it in one location, and reference it across my config. For example:
# Create a mapping of the static IP to an alias
/ip address alias add name=CustomDNS address=10.0.0.5
# Reference it throughout my config
/ip dhcp-server lease add address=CustomDNS mac-address=AB:CD:EF:12:34:56 server=LAN comment="reserve a static ip for my local DNS"
/ip dns static add address=CustomDNS name=dns.example.com type=A comment="allow clients to reference this ip with a friendly name for management"
/ip dns set allow-remote-requests=yes servers=CustomDNS comment="tell the mikrotik which server to send its dns requests to"
/ip firewall address-list add address=CustomDNS list=approved-dns-servers comment="add the ip to my set of ips that dns traffic is allowed to go to"
/ip firewall nat add action=dst-nat chain=dstnat dst-address-list=!approved-dns-servers dst-port=53 in-interface=LAN_BR protocol=udp to-addresses=CustomDNS to-ports=53
/ip firewall nat add action=dst-nat chain=dstnat dst-address-list=!approved-dns-servers dst-port=53 in-interface=LAN_BR protocol=tcp to-addresses=CustomDNS to-ports=53
With this feature, if I want to point to a new local DNS that Im trying out, or if I need to take the DNS down for maintenance, I only need to update the 10.0.0.5 address in a single location - the ip alias - instead of throughout my entire config. In many of these places, an address-list doesn’t apply.
I don’t know if I’m missing some easier way of accomplishing this, but IP address aliasing would be a great feature in my opinion.