I find the wiki to be both sparse in information and geared towards people with way more knowledge than the average home user.
All I want to do is set up a simple home router. I need all my gigabit ports for my LAN stuff, so I want to move my gateway port to ether6. I absolutely can not make this work to save my life.
I either get all my LAN connections and no internet, or I get internet but no LAN, or I try and change a rule and it tells me I can’t change this because such-and-such is a slave, but when I go to Interfaces and look at details for such-and-such, it says Master Port: None.
I look at the details for Bridge-Local and it doesn’t even tell me what’s being bridged.
I go to Bridge>Ports and half my interfaces are disabled, but there’s no option anywhere I can se to re-enable them!
How do you work on router settings when everything you change boots you out of winbox and you have to start over?
I don’t even know what I’m asking any more. Thanks for reading.
A lot of people will probably reply that “You can just use ‘quick-set’ and forget it.” I disagree with this. I wouldn’t sell someone a plane and say “It’s great, just leave it on autopilot.” I would expect that they know how (or want to learn how) to fly when something goes wrong. Mikrotik products are not geared for the average home user. Unless you are interested in learning networking fundamentals and Networking in Linux, it might be easier to stick with more ‘consumer’ level gear.
EDIT This sounds rather negative. Don’t let me dissuade you if you want to learn. I love Mikrotik products and I think the effort of learning to use them fully is rewarding and enormously practical, but it sounds like you will have to do a lot of fundamental learning.
I learned networking through the Cisco CCNA/CCNP programs. These courses aren’t cheap, but their books can be purchased inexpensively. If you want to learn real networking these CCNA course materials are one of the best places to start; If you just want to read your Facebook, you might want to get something easier.
That’s right. If you start with wiping the config and setting only the features and parameters you want, it will be working the best. Sure you need to read something about on wiki but will see how things work. First of all install latest stable 6.30.4.
Rather than move your WAN port to ether6 choose ether10 as a start, it takes less steps. You only need to unslave it before making the WAN configuration changes.
No no.. I get what you’re saying. I’m no stranger to Linux or a terminal. I just grabbed this router on the recommendation of a friend (plus it was on sale at Amazon) while looking for something to upgrade from my old WRT54, not knowing what I was getting into. I figured well, I flashed Tomato on that and got it set up easy enough… how hard can it be?
I’m just astonished at the lack of detail in the wiki, though. A certain level of knowledge is assumed, and my networking skills are subpar, to say the least. Some topics aren’t as bad as others, but it needs to be polished up.
I’m going to look into that book that you guys mentioned. Having a nice bound book at hand for those times I can’t get my outbound connection working will come in handy, for sure.
Actually this is the problem. Wiki describes how to use ros and not the networking principles. And that is right. User manual for a car describes how to use the car and not the driving principles on the road.