Mikromind - SOHO router management and monitoring

3rd party tools
1

Hello,

I'm a software engineer and network engineer at a WISP. We use Mikrotik equipment at our sites but also as managed routers for residential and business customers. I wrote software specifically for that second use case. This is a paid service but I'd still be interested in getting feedback to see if this is something other WISPs/MSPs would be interesting in using also. Here are some things I wanted to accomplish:

  • A field tech just takes a router, puts the mac on the account in the crm, and then plugs it into the service. The configuration gets automatically built from a template and pushed to the router when it comes online.
  • When a customer calls in and wants to do something like change their SSID or add a port forwarding rule, pretty much anyone can just do that. Someone who has never used Winbox or the CLI can just go to the website, change the value, and save.
  • I wanted to be able to define what I consider to be problems (signal worse than -x db, ports going to a lower rate than before, etc), and show those all in 1 place so we can be more proactive in fixing and prioritizing issues before we get calls in about them.

Of course, I ended up building out a lot more than that as we've been using it in our WISP. If anyone is interested, here is where you can find the website and a demo:

https://mikromind.com/

https://demo.mikromind.com/login

I've had a good time making this over the last 3-4 years and have refined it to cover some cases that we've needed at our WISP. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, and I'd be happy to talk about any part of it.

Charles

2

oh great. another one.

3

Seriously, WTF kind of response is that???

Someone puts real time and effort into developing something and shares it with the community, and this is all you can come up with?

If you have nothing constructive to contribute, then shut up, FFS!

That kind of arrogant, dismissive bullshit is absolutely pathetic.

4

It's all good. I've seen there have been a lot of vibe coded apps in basically every field and I have seen quite a few that say something like "Mikrotik Centralized Dashboard" or something like that. I could see someone viewing my post and thinking it's another thing that was vibe coded over the weekend and possibly being upset when they then see I plan on charging for it.

That being said, I've looked around a bit and I still haven't seen anything that is really that similar to the functionality of what I made, but it's possible I missed something.

To be transparent, I do use AI when coding at this point because it's quite a bit faster. I've been a developer for a while though so the process is quite a bit different and this is a project that I've put a lot of time and effort into and I've been running it on a production network.

5

@Larsa,

Your comments slowly earn special "WTF man" badge. :slight_smile:

To be honest, during last weeks we have seen the wave of very similar solutions.

Good. Let them exist, no problem but in the light of a new CMR funcionalites they loose they sense. Do not say they have no sense but just loose it. It's no wonder that some comment it as "New? Again? Really?"

It's interesting that for years people here cried for management tools but barely a few boasted about own solutions. Now, you can pick and choose as veges at a Saturday market.

6

thank you for understanding.

7

Of course the problem is that MikroTik have teased us for years with centralized management and monitoring, and when nothing was forthcoming (and the existing Dude that had some features) was being deprecated, people have started developing their own solutions.

And now that several of them have been offered here, suddenly MikroTik have announced their new CMR feature...

8

So these two statements are interesting:

"Do I need to open ports on customer routers?"]
No. Every device connects out to MikroMind over its own WireGuard tunnel, so routers behind NAT are fully manageable. Nothing inbound is ever opened on the customer's network.

"What RouterOS versions does MikroMind support?"
RouterOS 7, tested against current stable releases. Devices still on RouterOS 6 are automatically upgraded during onboarding, and every device is kept on your target firmware from then on.

Forced upgrade 6->7 .... hmmmmm

9

@cmassey Using LLMs as tools in software development is pretty much standard practice these days. Whether as coding assistants, sounding boards for architecture discussions, for refactoring, or simply helping out with Git administration and other routine tasks. So there's really nothing new or controversial about it.

The real problem is when people who've never developed a proper system before rely entirely on so-called vibe coding. That's when you often end up with AI slop full of weird bugs and questionable security.

Anyway, I've looked through the documentation on your website, and I like that you offer both on-premises and cloud deployment. The architecture also seems to have some good fundamentals like WireGuard, no exposed management ports on customer routers, and isolated customer instances.

But I find the security information too limited for me to feel comfortable with the cloud offering, especially in an ISP/MSP environment.

I have three questions in particular:

  1. Do you support mandatory MFA and granular role-based access control (RBAC), especially when multiple people are involved in administration?

  2. How are stored secrets such as credentials, encryption keys, and backups protected? I'm particularly interested in encryption at rest and key management.

  3. What technical and operational safeguards limit the impact of a compromised cloud instance and prevent an attacker from gaining administrative access to a customer's entire MikroTik fleet?

These are pretty fundamental security questions for a cloud platform with centralized management access to potentially hundreds or thousands of routers.

I wouldn't deploy the cloud offering in a production ISP/MSP environment without clear answers to those questions.

That said, I really like the concept, and it's good to see someone putting serious time and effort into developing something useful for the MikroTik community.

PS. Don't let the "another one" crowd discourage you. Apparently we've gone from complaining for years about the lack of management tools to complaining when someone actually builds one. Wow, quite an achievement!

And claiming that these solutions are already losing their relevance just because MikroTik has introduced CMR is a pretty strange argument. CMR is still in an early beta stage, only available in RouterOS 7.26beta, with a fairly limited feature set compared to a full-fledged management platform. Besides, CMR addresses different needs than what MikroMind offers.

Dismissing an existing solution without even comparing their actual functionality hardly makes sense, especially when there's no discussion whatsoever about the real operational requirements of an ISP or MSP.

But sure, it's perfectly understandable that someone looking at things from a home lab perspective might not fully grasp the operational requirements of an ISP or MSP. What's harder to understand is why anyone would assume those requirements don't matter just because they're outside their own experience?

And as for the original "another one" comment and its equally insightful follow-up, well, at least the level of technical contribution remains impressively consistent, doesn't it? :wink:

10

No, they don't.

CMR is still extremely limited in functionality compared to what real-world professional deployments actually require. Well, easy enough to overlook that when looking at things purely from a home lab perspective.

You're welcome! Two posts, not a single technical argument. At least you're consistent.

11

Yes, they do as some of them are just toys made for fun. Good. Let IT gods bless them.
These toys are mostly "at kindergarden age" according to their funcionalities as CMR is too. But CMR is/would be the built-in solution made by gear producer. A BIG advantage.
Yes, some of these new tools are way in front comparing to CMR. Let IT gods and businnes users bless them.
It's better to have a whole market full of goods than nothing however it does not change the fact that we have unexpected harvest time that cann't be explained simply with: they have been working on them for a long, long time and right now there is a time for presentation.
It's just an opinion on a situation, not complaining about an excess of tools.

12

YAY ANOTHER ONE
keep it in your github
if it's good people will find it

13

@BartoszP, CMR could certainly become a decent starting point for smaller installations and home labs, and perhaps even a useful building block for integration with more advanced third-party management platforms. But replacing those platforms? I seriously doubt it.

Let's not forget that MikroTik is primarily a networking hardware and RouterOS vendor, hardly a company with a stellar track record of delivering complete, professional management platforms. Frankly, I don't think they have either the time or the expertise to develop and maintain something of that complexity. Just look at where ROSE ended up to get an idea of what I mean.

Being built into RouterOS might be an advantage, but it doesn't magically provide the functionality required in complex professional environments. In fact, being independent of MikroTik's own management platform is a pretty significant advantage. Advanced management requirements should never be limited by a hardware vendor's own feature set and development priorities.

And that's precisely why there's a market for third-party solutions in the first place. CMR and those platforms can perfectly well coexist and even complement each other. Different requirements, different solutions. Not exactly rocket science.

As for the "toys" argument, sure, some projects may be little more than experiments. But dismissing serious third-party solutions without even bothering to evaluate their actual capabilities is just plain stupid. What matters is what they deliver in real-world deployments, not whether they were developed by MikroTik.

And the whole "unexpected harvest" argument? Multiple developers addressing a long-standing gap in the market is hardly surprising. Unless there's some actual evidence suggesting otherwise, what's the point of speculating?

Perhaps spend less time questioning why these solutions exist and more time evaluating what they actually bring to the table.

14

Aha, yet another home lab expert has spoken! Such an incredibly insightful and constructive contribution. Thank you! :wink:

15

Anytime, no problem.

16

Sometimes there is no need to even install anything as reading the Q&A of that solution says:

ROS7 is a must. Mikromind - SOHO router management and monitoring - #8 by BartoszP

What if you have TDMA solution implemented and you have to stay with ROS6?

Is it a proper tool to manage fleet of big, Bigger or reallyBIG WISPs?

It's not an argument. Just observation of the situation.
You are very fragile to mentioning AI but there is a big coincidence of some of these tools and contemporary access to AI generated "content".

EDIT:

BTW 7.26beta [development] is released! - #115 by Amm0

17

I think it's great, it gives the Dev's @mikrotik more ideas - more open source code the better imo. I would never use any of these solutions in production due to security risks and I will be waiting for mikrotik to develop a mikrotik controller.

18

BUT THE CODE, WHERE IS THE CODE?
Hmm?

19

I found a vid on YT by 2GT-Rich yesterday and he has created OS manager GitHub - 2GT-Media-Group-LLC/mikrotik-manager: A self-hosted, full-stack network management platform for MikroTik devices. Monitor, configure, and manage your entire MikroTik infrastructure — routers, switches, and wireless access points — from a single web interface. · GitHub

20

yes we covered the 2GETRICH guy on Discord