Hello,
We are using Mikrotik routeros v7.5 netpower 16P(arm) and we face packet drops issue on daily basis which leads to loosing access of the mikrotik.
Our config is really simple with all the ports are in the bridge and RSTP is enabled on the bridge and HW-Offload is also enabled on the ports. Moreover, one management vlan is also part of the bridge.
I went through the STP/RSTP config in this device and the devices connected to it but config is okay and I am unable to understand why we are facing packet drops issue which leads to loosing the mikrotik device’s access.
I monitor logs as well and there are some bridge RX loop packets recorded on ether3 (airfiber 24 antenna is connected) very often but the thing which confuses me is that the occurrence of these bridge loop packets and loosing the mikrotik access are not same. We loose access even when there are no bridge loop packets recorded in the logs.
I would be immensely grateful if any of the experts could guide me in this regards as I am trying to resolve the issue since sometime now.
Please have a look at the logs.
ether3: bridge RX looped packet - MAC 48:8f:x:c6:x:x → 33:33:00:00:00:01 ETHERTYPE 0x86dd
ether3: bridge RX looped packet - MAC 48:8f:x:c6:x:x → 01:00:0c:cc:cc:cc ETHERTYPE 0x0004
ether3: bridge RX looped packet - MAC 48:8f:x:c6:x:x → ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff ETHERTYPE 0x0800 IP UDP 172.x.x.x:5678 → 255.255.255.255:5678
The issue has been resolved and I’m updating it so may be it can help someone in case they are facing the same issue.
I read countless threads where people discussed about this error but didn’t get any valid clue that would make sense.
We have redundancies in our network and have configured RSTP throughout the mikrotik devices and in some devices MSTP (ubnt switches).
I checked all the devices in the extended network connected via ether3 and found these loop errors in those mikrotik switches.
The broadcast loop messages are a result of these simple loop messages which I was encountering in my extended network equipment(Mikrotik), so, I reconfigured one of my mikrotik switches in a correct way (It was configured before me and hardly anything was connected to it, so, initially I didn’t pay much attention to it) and never faced these errors again.
But there was another mikrotik switch which had redundancies and RSTP was configured and it was correctly configured but I was still facing these loop messages on two of my ports(Both had wireless radios connecting the site to the other sites). The other sites had UBNT switches and MSTP configured. The root port selection was always from among these two ports which I confirmed from the logs.
So, what I did was I made another port as a root port by adjusting the port costs and made both these ports as an alternative port. But still one port would still go into the learning,forwarding and discarding state even when it was an alternative port. So, I disabled this port as I had redundancies in my network. Since, then everything is working normally and I never faced packet drops issue again.
One more thing which I will be doing now is configuring RSTP in the UBNT switches as well to maintain one standard spanning tree protocol throughout the network.
These loop warning/error messages are serious threat to the network and can make you loose access to the equipment like I was facing it.