FEATURE REQUEST: Source Interface/Address for system services (Updates, NTP client, etc)

RouterOS General
1

I use public IPs on my loopback interfaces and RFC1918 addresses on my point-to-point links to save address space.
Everything works perfectly (OSPF, BGP, BFD, etc) except for local services which use the address and outgoing interface based on routing table.
This causes things like the NTP client, ‘Check for Updates’ and a few other system services to sometimes use the RFC1918 address on the point-to-point links as the source.

My workaround are some masquerade rules for now, but if the system services could have a ‘source address’ or ‘source interface’ option so I can use my loopbacks, I’d be in heaven.

Is this too much to ask?

2

Somewhat of a workaround is if you use VRF for your MGMT-services then you can define “pref-src” when you define the routing table for that VRF i /ip/route.

But I fail to locate any up2date info of that setting at https://help.mikrotik.com

Only locate this at https://wiki.mikrotik.com

pref-src (IP address range;)	match routes with a specific preferred source value

But I agree with you that it would be nice to specify both VRF and srcip to be used.

Also if this can be added to both the FTP and logging services (who both lacks VRF-support) would be nice.