RBM33G M.2-Slot

Hardware MikroTik hardware general
1

Hello Community,

does someone use the M.2-Slot on the RBM33G?
I would like to have an internal LAN-Connection of 2x RBM33G inside ONE case. So I bought a M.2 to LAN Adapter with M-Key.

Unfortunately the LAN-Adapter is not beeing recognized by RouterOS. The chipset of the adapter is a “Realtek RTL8168E” and should be supported since “Linux Kernel 3.3 and above”.

Can someone explain to me why this adapter is not working?

Thanks in advance!

2

First RouterOS customized operating system and don’t have wide range driver inside. Second as far as i know RBM33G M2 slot belongs to M2 SSD’s for expand storage nothing else. Third don’t know what you are trying to do but RBM33G has enough eth connection on it maybe you should consider to put something else between them or buy another wide capable RB.

3

Thanks for your answer.

I want to build a bigger mobile router out of 2x RBM33G.
The first RBM33G hast two 5G-Modems in it’s PCIe slots (failover with different mobile networks/SIMs) and the second one has two WLAN adapters installed (client and AP).

The 6 ethernet ports are exposed in the front and now I want to connect the two boards internally somehow. It works via a USB-3.0 network adapter but it’s not pretty. So I thought about the M.2 slot.

Is the linux kernel from RouterOS really customized? If that is the case and that the M.2 slot is only ment for storage it would explain that behaviour.

Well, I have to rethink this. Maybe I’m going for the USB solution…

If you have a nice idea for a single mobile device with two WLAN- and two LTE/5G-adapters, please tell me. :slight_smile:

Have a nice day!

4

There might be two possible issues here:

  1. You can check if the ROS can actually see the PCI device in system/resources/pci. If the device is there, it means the M.2 slot have all necessary pci-e signals for this to work. If the device is not there, the M.2 is probably only meant to be used for LTE modems with USB interface and not pci-e devices.
  2. While ROS is based on Linux kernel, only selected modules are included (just to support official Mikrotik hardware), mostly for flash memory size reasons (devices with 16MB of flash etc. etc.). So there is no Realtek kernel module to load to make the card work. You can try asking support nicely about this, but your chances of this ever working are pretty slim.

If you need more LAN ports, only solution is either use USB to LAN adapters (performance will suck because it’s USB, but it may be OK for some use cases) or add a switch with VLANs etc.