I have a problem with router randomly dropping WAN connection and I need a way to debug/find the reason of the problem.
My ISP recently did some hardware modernization on their end and MIKROTIK RouterBOARD RB951Ui-2HnD became unstable, ISP support told me the problem is with my router and it seemed true, because in most cases it recovered connection after reboot.
So I went and bought exactly the same router, it was working fine for a few hours, but the same problem occurred. It can work fine for 10 minutes - few hours and than DHCP clients get stucks in “searching” state. I do not see any useful info in router log.
Where should I start?
What I already did: tried to use different ports as WAN on my old router, updated routerOS to latest version. settings.rsc (3.86 KB)
Would you expect to tell you that it is their problem ? I dont think so…
Try not to use a DHCP client, instead use a static IP address on your WAN interface, add your default route manually and set your DNS server …
I do not expect anything from them before I can proof the problem is on their end. But I doubt my 2 mikrotik routers are broken.
I tried to set static data instead of using DHCP server and internet does not work this way at all.
so, I still have the same problem and ISP techs came to check it again.
They called to the office while they were here and saw cable errors in network monitoring system. Idk what they use there to see the errors, but when they connected WAN cable directly to their test laptop, the errors disappeared.
I told them my router is new and there might be something wrong with the DHCP or some other settings on their end, but they could not tell me anything useful. Looked like it’s not their level of knowledge
They said “it’s possible some routers are not supported in our network”. Wtf?
To test the problem, I connected the cable directly to my laptop and shared WI-FI using a windows hotspot. I did not have any drops in 5 days.
Any ideas what can be wrong? At this point I’m pretty sure some cheap tp-link will work fine, but I’d prefer to make mikrotik work.
ISP support is useful, I’ll try to reach to someone there who could help me, but there is a very high chance they will just tell me “the problem is on your end, fix your router/get a new router”
How long is the cable between Mikrotik’s WAN and the bridge? And can you replace by some other one? I’ve seen simply mechanical problems between the socket and cable end, so even if the cable works with the PC, it may not with the Mikrotik. While in “searching” state, it would be good to run /tool sniffer quick interface=the-wan-interface-name to see whether the router gets any responses to the DHCP requests it sends.
You have a small LAN-switch you could put between them ?
Perhaps there is some interoperability issues between the ethernet-port in Mikrotik and the device of your ISP.
That is perhaps the reason the problem remained even after getting a new router from the same vendor
Give it a try.
Another hardware and another chipset, between Mikrotik and his computer. Might be enough to change a “barely within signal level” connection to “nope, don’t hear you” one.
I’ve seen differences between RJ45 connectors too. I have one that locks with the Mikrotik, but doesn’t with my network card. It shouldn’t happen, but we are in an imperfect world.
cable length is ~70 meters and it’s not that easy to replace it. I’ll do some tests with a different router and will try to put a switch before mikrotik before replacing the cable
