Hi,
I bought a board with L4 license upgradable to v6. What license do I have to buy in order to get to v7? L5 which costs $95 ? And then… ?
Or is it just “buy another L4, yet another L4, …” ?
AFAIK, a new L4 license is enough. In that case, when v7 is out, you can then get a new L4 to make it upgradable up to v8, and so on.
Since v7 is not out yet, if I were you, I’d just upgrade to v6 now, and wait for v7 to come out, and then buy a new L4 afterwards (i.e. one upgradable to v8) IF you want its features. You’re saving yourself one license, and maybe more if v8 doesn’t have anything you need.
What kind of board is it and what software version is it running?
I bought my RB600A years ago with version 3.x, which was upgradeable to version 4 at the time. Now I’m running version 6, without ever buying a license.
MikroTik, as far as I know, has never enforced the charging for an upgrade license. Not saying that it will always be like that, but currently it is. Whenever you install the OS on the board, it just increments to another version that you can upgrade to.
Hi,
I have ~100 AP’s in my network, mostly RB433. However this was a question regarding sustainability of such a network. I can’t easily imagine physical replacement of all AP’s after the license expiration. As the network serves directly end users with their BYOD equipment, I have to be ready to do stuff like security patches on the AP’s (do you remember that Android devices couldn’t connect to ROS 5.x?)
My situation: I have to decide whether to stay calm with Mikrotik or whether to desperately try to switch to another “enterprise” platform like Ruckus, Cisco or HP. As we do not generate revenue (this is a university campus), the solution must stay with me for another 5-7 years.
It must not be a “disruptive concept” (that’s why Ubiquiti is out for me).
Better is the enemy of good.
If you have a fully functional network, without issues, what advantage would an upgrade bring?
A lot of people still use 4.17 or 5.26 to their full satisfaction, and do not bother to switch to ROS 6.
So, if it works, don’t touch it and the force will be with you for the planned 5 to 7 years 
Still, that’s not an answer good enough for me.
What would I do one day with a campus network consisting of 400 AP’s when somebody broke PEAP-AES? I need to have the plan for this. The plan with, say HP, would be - for the lifetime of the equipment which is 10 years on average, I will just receive yet another update for free. With buying lots of AP’s a physically remounting them, that’s not so realistic.
I can’t easily imagine physical replacement of all AP’s after the license expiration.
Fortunately, that’s the one thing you’re certainly not going to need to do.
First off, licenses don’t “expire”, in that the equipment will continue to work indefinitely. And minor version upgrades are free. It’s only if you need a MAJOR version upgrade that the license comes into play.
And more importantly - like I said, getting a new license for each AP is enough, and besides - you can upgrade each one remotely. Winbox has sufficient UI for both changing the license, and for upgrading RouterOS. There’s even means to set up “auto upgrade” from a central AP to the remaining ones… though I think licenses still need to be adjusted individually prior to that.
I need to have the plan for this.
The plan here would be that once v7 is out, the next fiscal year’s budget should feature an “emergency fund” for enough L4 licenses in case you need to upgrade all APs. You don’t have to actually use that money if there are no “must have” features or security fixes in that new version, but the plan should be for that sufficient sum to be allocated if needed. Once used, there won’t be a need to include it in the next budget, until v8 is out.
If the campus wants a more “permanent” fixture on their budget (one that applies for years on end, rather than requesting a report as to whether it should or not allocate the sum)… Then just unconditionally include the emergency fund, and keep “returning” it when not used. By definition, an “emergency fund” doesn’t need to be spent if there were no emergencies in that period.
The above may sound like it greatly increases the TCO… Until you actually review your next few year’s budgets, where you’ll see you’ve almost never bought new licenses, and thus the actual TCO is ultimately less than other enterprise routers. That said, I can see campus accountants being unable to realize that up front, and in planning for the worst, they’ll assume you’ll always spend the allocated money, and perceive the TCO as being… let’s see… 10 years * 400 APs * $45 each = $18000 per year, or a total of $180000 for a decade. I don’t know how much are 400 Cisco APs going to be worth over 10 years, but I assume it would be less than that IF you were to do major upgrades to RouterOS every year, which you won’t.
BTW, 400 APs is a lot… I’m pretty sure MikroTik staff might be able to give you L3 licenses for that at a cheaper individual price (the license page in the wiki states that more than 100 licenses qualify).
+1. I don’t think you guys have anything to worry about.
What is that board?
What RouterOS version you have?
Not really…
I have RB532 s.n. 114501D225DD with L4 Licence 264*-*SFC with RouterOS 6.15 and BIOS [firmware] 2.18 and is not upgradable to 7.x
But what I ask? NOTHING… The board is installed from 2007, now after 7 SEVEN years of uninterrupted service, when 7.x is out I’m forced (really NOT, depend on new software features, and if really I ned it…) to replace it.
But after 7 year, I replace it also if possible to run 7.x without buy another licence…
About RB133C3?? My first 200/300 CPE installed (on year 2007) are that board, I replace it all some years ago with RB411 and above models because 4.x not working well on that model…
well… this would be my response… http://alicevixie.blogspot.cz/2014/07/the-poor-enterprise-s-wi-fi.html
RB532 is upgradable to RouterOS7 (which is not even released yet, but anyway). If you will have problems upgrading to v7 when it comes out, email support and we will help you.
I think he meant that the license doesn’t allow upgrading, and that he’ll need to get a new license if he wants to upgrade to v7 when it comes out. I’m sure rextended understands the hardware itself should be upgradable without problems.
This license value is legacy, and is not taken into account. upgrade to v6.17 and upgrade to v7 will be possible. software ignores it.
Wait, so the ignore is intentional?!? I was left with the impression it’s a bug and not a feature. That legally speaking, license is a limiting factor, even though technically speaking, it isn’t.
If that’s not the case anymore, shouldn’t the license page finally be updated to reflect that?
Refresh the manual. We will also announce it in the next newsletter. It was always intentional.
You might want to also include a paragraph about “Upgradable to” being a legacy value that is ignored, as I’m sure otherwise, in a few months’ time, someone will come along, asking if this value is important or not, saying the manual doesn’t clearly point one way or another… I can already imagine reading “It says ‘unlimited software upgrades’, but RouterOS says ‘upgradable to’, so is the manual maybe in error or what?”.
I finally replace the RB532 with one metal 5, too slow. Now the latency is very slow: 2/4ms on 9Km link with -69/-66 dBm 31/99 % CCQ (because I’m waiting for cut one tree growth between)
No more mipsle device on my network.
Hi,
first of all: BIG THANK YOU for your decision!
…but when I tried this with RouterBoard 333 currently on 3.30 :
Rebooting...
Stopping services...
verified ntp-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of ntp-4.17
verified multicast-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of multicast-4.17
verified mpls-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of mpls-4.17
verified ipv6-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of ipv6-4.17
verified hotspot-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of hotspot-4.17
verified gps-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of gps-4.17
verified dhcp-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of dhcp-4.17
verified calea-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of calea-4.17
verified advanced-tools-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of advanced-tools-4.17
verified wireless-nv2-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of wireless-nv2-4.17
verified wireless-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of wireless-4.17
verified userman-test-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of userman-test-4.17
verified user-manager-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of user-manager-4.17
verified ups-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of ups-4.17
verified system-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of system-4.17
verified security-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of security-4.17
verified routing-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of routing-4.17
verified routerboard-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of routerboard-4.17
verified ppp-4.17-ppc.npk
ERROR: license does not support new version of ppp-4.17
Restarting system.
RouterBOOT booter 2.11
RouterBoard 333
This makes me believe it wasn’t always that way.