How to configure a RB2011 to simulate several NAT routers

RouterOS General
1

Hello,

In my lab, I’ve got an old (but updated to 7.20.8) RB2011 that I would like to use it to simulate from 1 and up to 4 NAT routers. My requirements are:

  • eth1 is permanent OOB port connected to LAN1
  • eth2 is also connected to LAN1 with a dedicated IP (different from eth1, eth4, eth6, …)
  • eth3 is connected to LAN2 and anything that comes in eth3 must go out through eth2
  • eth4 is also connected to LAN1 with a dedicated IP (different from eth1, eth2, eth6, …)
  • eth5 is connected to LAN3 and anything that comes in eth5 must go out through eth4
  • … and so on

How can I do that ?

Do I need to create a bridge for each pair of ethN, ethN+1 port (I don’t think so)?

Do I need to create a routing table for each simulated router (I do think so) ?

Best regards

2

Add some IP→VRF instances with the pairs of interfaces in each of them, and work from that.

3

@pe1chl

Thank you very much for responding.

I’ve never used VRF before but using it, it seems I could configure what I was after, the main benefit being that when, for instance, I configured ether4 and ether5 to belong to vrf2, then dynamically added routes involved vrf2 table (and not main table anymore).

Thanks again.

4

May I ask about the purpose? I am curious if any of the endpoints would ever know whether their packets went through that 4 step NAT process instead of a 1 step NAT process?

5

@Avalanche

I’m not sure I correctly understood your question (I’m sorry for that) but my purpose is to simulate in a lab with a single box, up to four different mostly independent NAT routers.