MikroTik wAP60G Wireless Wire does not find gateway

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

I have bought a MikroTik Wireless Wire set, which consists of two wAP60G devices. Traffic accross the link is working nicely, but I notice that the devices can not fetch software updates, and can not ping the gateway. How do I configure each device to look for the correct gateway?

Here’s my setup:

Location A:

  • Internet Provider A modem: 192.168.0.1, DHCP server, 192.168.0.0/16
  • MikroTik wAP60G master: 192.168.88.2, default setup, except for /16 mask and firewall blocks DHCP
  • Devices at the ethernet side of the master all use Provider A for DHCP and internet traffic, but internal traffic to 192.168.x.x is local or travels over the bridge (this works nicely).

Location B:

  • MikroTik wAP60G slave: 192.168.88.3, default setup, except for /16 mask and firewall blocks DHCP
  • Internet Provider B modem: 192.168.178.1, DHCP server, 192.168.178.0/16
  • Devices at the ethernet side of the slave all use Provicder B for DHCP and internet traffic, but internal traffic to 192.168.x.x is local or travels over the bridge (also works).

Internal traffic routing, as well as traffic flowing from computers on either side of the bridge all work fine and I am very happy with the setup and the speed.

However, when I tried to do a software update on the MikroTik master on Location A, but it says “Error: Connection Timeout”. When I log in to 192.168.88.2 (the master) and click on “Terminal”, I can not ping the router, nor can I ping any internal address.

From machines in the network, I can ping any other machine just fine. It’s just the traffic from the MiktoTik device itself that seems to be blocked.

I have tried to configure the “Gateway” in the Quick Set menu, but somehow that does not “stick”, pressing “apply” will erase the gateway I just filled in.

Any tips on how to enable traffic from the MikroTik device itself to the correct gateway on each side of the bridge?

2

You must change the IP addresses of the WAP Antennas to ones that match your subnet…
So for location A it could be e.g 192.168.0.10, set the DNS to 192.168.0.1 and the default route to 192.168.0.1 as well…
Do the same for Location B…

3

But that is what I did by making the subnet a /16, correct? So 192.168.88.2 will be in the 192.168.x.x subnet.
If I would make the subnets smaller, the bridge would not work, because anything outside the subnet would go to the router, and not through the bridge.

4

Update: I added a static route to both endpoints, each redirecting traffic to the router on that side of the connection:

Site A: 0.0.0.0/0 → 192.168.0.1
Site B: 0.0.0.0/0 → 192.168.178.1

Both devices can now fetch updates, and I have updated to 6.45.3, but now the connection keeps dropping.

This looks like a radio issue, but it is hard to debug. The distance between de devices (according to the align tool) is 146 meters, and the signal strengths are around -65dB. When there is a connection I get up to 2.3Gbps rates in the align tool, but after 15 seconds the connection shows lost tx packets and then drops. It comes back up again after a 3 to 30 seconds.

Tips on how to get this more stable are welcome.

5

Another update: The intermitting connection problems seem to be solved by chosing a fixed frequency. On the master node, I selected Wireless, then clicked on the tab W60G, Clicked on the row with “wlan60-1” and changed the Frequency to 64800MHz and pressed “apply”. Ever since that change the link seems stable, about 900Mbps.