IP Bindings change without reason

RouterOS General
1

Greetings~

This is my first post to the forum so please go easy on me if this has been addressed and answered :open_mouth:

We have several RBs in the field in our WISP sites. We usually use one central RB as the hotspot server for the site and use RBs or other devices as APs that we do wireless and wired backhauls with. We set up IP binding for each of the Mtik APs on the main RB, but I have noticed occasionally one of them drops off our graphing. Popping into the main RB I can scan and find it has re-associated with the main RB but the MAC address has spontaneously changed…not always just within the range that these have on the factory sticker on the bottom (changes within the last two octets) sometimes it swaps out the last half of the address. This happens frequently when we manually bounce them, but also happens seemingly at random. We run bridging on most of them, so I am wondering if that is part of the reason this is happening - i.e. is the bridge just grabbing an available MAC at random. It is something we have been puzzled on for quite awhile, any ideas would be welcome:)

–JT

2

I can’t speak to the changing MAC addresses, but running AP management on the same network as customers is fundamentally bad practice. Look into VLANs and distributing two to each AP - one carries the AP IP address and is used for management, the other bridges customers back to the Hotspot. Then apply firewall filters on the router/AP that implements the layer three interfaces for the VLANs and deny customers to the APs. That will also save you from having to bypass infrastructure from the Hotspot since it will no longer reside behind the Hotspot.

Doesn’t exactly answer your question, I apologize for that.