Routerboard has reserved IPs for common devices. Unifi AP sometimes ignoring them?

RouterOS General
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I’ll be up front, I’m no pro with Routerboard. I’ve been tinkering and assisting with troubleshooting them, off and on since I started IT a few years ago. I love Mikrotik Routerboards, however never had the need for one at home until a few months ago, along with grabbing a Unifi AP-Pro, as my work uses mostly Unifi, I figured some random hands on experience of both would do me some good. Setup a Raspberry Pi as a PiHole+Unifi Controller, and for the most part been fun.

The issue I’ve been having about once a week or two, is some wireless devices, that I have reserved on the Routerboard, is not translating to the AP when an IP is assigned. Resulting in two devices on the network fighting for the same IP. Some times I catch a device, same MAC, using a different IP than what is reserved on the Routerboard.

In a situation like this, I would go and ask on Unifi’s forums, however the last couple times I’ve asked for assistance, it’s been responded with “Either you use same like network gear, or don’t bother going beyond home routers.” like responses. In the short run, yeah, I would have stuck with my netgear night hawk, but I wanted more control of my network, and eventually break into having my own home lab when we buy our first home.

I’m not sure what all specifics are needed, and I don’t mind sharing screenshots/configs as needed.
And for the record, yes, the Unifi AP, Controller, and Routerboard are up to date, at least as of a couple weekends ago. Routerboard 6.45.5.

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I can suggest that posting configurations and logs always help, with a diagram of signal path between device if you got multiple devices involved in a problem…

I can say your problem seems like ARP resolution is going south someplace. Mikrotik has a feature called “proxy-arp”, but a lot of thing devices/routers/switches use a similar schemes (think L2 NAT’ing of MAC addresses). Your problem also may be something else too…

But one of the things great on the Mikrotik is the troubleshooting tools, so you can answer your own questions – not that people aren’t helpful here, but most times I find using Mikrotik’s “torch” and “sniffer”, or the firewall’s “connection tracking” can narrow down things tools WAY quicker than trying to describe my problem well enough for someone to actually be able to help concretely…

Anyway in your setup, “torch” might tell you what MAC address the Mikrotik is seeing, which would be a good reference to troubleshooting your DHCP reservation issue.

If you already use Ubiquity at work, why not try CAPsMAN at home? I can’t say it’s better than UniFi…and certainly not simpler…but interesting take at managing APs. The try to use the Mikrotik firewall to web route traffic through the PiHole. might be more fun to try than looking at packet traces :wink:.