/ip cloud (ddns + time) = Error: request timed out (90% of time)

Any one know what is up with /ip cloud (the mt DDNS and “update time” cloud service) and “Error: request Timed out”? Ive been seeing this over the past 12 months at just about every install i have done (installs on various ISPs ). usually, by hitting Force Update several times i can get a request/post to go through, but just about always i get Error: Request Timed out.

What kind of cloud service has this poor of up-time / reach-ability (over this long of time)? or is it that cloudflare (or similar) is in-front of these cloud servers and causing issues?

(im aware that there may be some type of brute force detection in place, thus x# of attempts in y# of seconds = blocked, but i always try to allow the 1st, initial request to go through on its own, and it almost always comes back with “Error: request timed out”.

tks

Search this forum and join similar topics that already exist here. The cloud features are so unreliable for real usage, that I am always disabling them fully. Maybe they are a bit useful for some individual home users because they don’t care how it works. But that’s all.

Just wrote to support@mikrotik.com about that too.
From my investigation on the issue, it looks like the DDNS service connects to 82.198.87.240 or 91.188.51.139. However, 91.188.51.139 is unreachable due to network loop on their (or their provider’s) side:

output: in:(unknown 0) out:wan proto UDP, 92.247.143.243:35737 -> 91.188.51.139:15252, len 548

.

$ traceroute -n 91.188.51.139
traceroute to 91.188.51.139 (91.188.51.139), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  10.133.254.3  1.865 ms  1.893 ms  1.853 ms
 2  108.170.233.180  14.918 ms  14.903 ms  14.901 ms
 3  209.85.249.133  14.688 ms 209.85.249.135  14.956 ms 209.85.249.133  14.656 ms
 4  62.115.50.246  14.677 ms  14.877 ms  14.957 ms
 5  213.155.135.82  14.946 ms 213.155.135.84  14.943 ms 213.155.135.80  14.706 ms
 6  80.91.249.9  32.678 ms 213.155.136.142  28.461 ms  27.694 ms
 7  62.115.118.237  36.462 ms 62.115.118.241  38.616 ms 62.115.118.245  38.497 ms
 8  62.115.12.146  38.720 ms  34.662 ms  39.725 ms
 9  78.154.154.162  38.663 ms  34.647 ms  38.431 ms
10  89.201.51.214  34.538 ms  34.524 ms  38.177 ms
11  89.201.51.214  39.171 ms  33.767 ms  33.594 ms
12  * 89.201.51.213  40.921 ms  39.873 ms
13  * 89.201.51.214  39.510 ms  33.689 ms
14  * * *
15  89.201.51.214  38.696 ms  34.112 ms  33.987 ms
16  * * *
17  89.201.51.214  38.860 ms  34.374 ms  39.930 ms
18  89.201.51.213  34.733 ms * *
19  * 89.201.51.214  40.342 ms *
20  89.201.51.213  34.842 ms * *
21  89.201.51.214  34.827 ms  40.456 ms  39.313 ms
22  * * *
23  89.201.51.214  35.317 ms  39.850 ms  35.317 ms
24  89.201.51.213  41.074 ms * *
25  89.201.51.214  35.305 ms  35.402 ms  35.292 ms
26  89.201.51.213  35.873 ms * *
27  * 89.201.51.214  35.434 ms *
28  * * *
29  89.201.51.214  35.544 ms  35.378 ms  41.051 ms
30  * 89.201.51.213  35.407 ms *

The traffic bounces back-forth between 89.201.51.213 and 89.201.51.214, and of course expires in transit. This explains the time-out we are seeing. After some unsuccessful retries, DDNS tries with 81.198.87.240 and it succeeds.

output: in:(unknown 0) out:wan proto UDP, 92.247.143.243:35737 -> 81.198.87.240:15252, len 548

.

> /ip cloud print                            
    ddns-enabled: yes
     update-time: yes
  public-address: 92.247.143.243
        dns-name: 67d206c1acbf.sn.mynetname.net
          status: updated

.

So it is up to some network guy on Mikrotik’s (or their ISP) side to fix the routing issue, and everything will be fine.

if you really have to use it. use DDNS only, and force update every 10min using script.
and use NTP client for correct time.

I find this combination seems to be most reliable for me.

Did you try to clear DNS cache? 91.188.51.139 does not exist anymore and cloud.mikrotik.com is resolved to 81.198.87.240

When did you guys remove 91.188.51.139 from the DNS server? Yesterday I rebooted 2 routers because of upgrade to 6.41.2 (which should have cleared the DNS cache) and the routers were still making attempts to 91.188.51.139.

I flushed the DNS now and it seems to work.

We Still constantly see Error: request timed out (although some times it works, but its realisticlly 80-90% of time fails).

Im testing this on Various ISPs (different customer installs), its constant (ie not just one day, or one week, past 6-12 months). the only way i can get it to work, some times, is by hitting force update for about 2-5 minutes (re-hit each time after it shows error).

One user replying that it worked for him once, does not mean this issue is solved / resovled. (if you search forums, others have this issue very often).

Not only that, but the system time obtained from this ip cloud is often so far off that it really isn’t acceptable.
MikroTik’s position is that it is good enough to set the approximate time of a router (maybe for things like certificates)
but is should be easy to keep a cloud server to within a second of accurate time using NTP, instead of 10 minutes as it is now.
So: untick those checkmarks under /ip cloud and use something better.

(e.g. set the SNTP client to use DNS name pool.ntp.org)

Adding my own experience to this.

Just had a reason to use this feature as I have a router on an ADSL connection and the user (aka my boss) wants a fixed name to access it. Thought no problem, I can use the cloud option, then just set him a nice dns entry under our domain with a cname to xyz.mynetname.net.

Tried it on my home router first which is on the end of 70Mbps “fibre-to-the-cabinet” in the UK. Took me at least 8 attempts to not get a timeout which is why I ended up here. It does seem that I can ping cloud.mikrotik.com from the device though so doesn’t seem to be a connectivity or dns issue accessing the cloud service.

I’m very reluctant to now use this as I have absolutely no confidence that it will update successfully when he has an address change. I’m actually shocked at how bad it is considering my usual experience with routeros.

(Note that I wouldn’t rely on this for time regardless of how well it works. NTP is a far better choice)

There still seems to be a major DNS misconfiguration on the domain used for the IP cloud services. Perhaps fixing this would improve reliability.

https://r-1.ch/r1dns/dnscheck.cgi?domain=mynetname.net