I am brand new to the Mikrotik Community and the product itself. I have taught myself all the basics of the RouterOS over the past few weeks using mostly post here in the forums as well as MTwiki. However, I cannot seem to find a good discussion about running a virtual Hotspot on one side of the radio while using the other to connect fixed wireless clients.
Application: I am using 3 RB433AH radios for my city-wide IP camera network which will be connected via fixed client CPEs., I will be using the virtual hotspot to connect free wifi users downtown. I was able to get the virtual hotspot up and running just fine, the problem lies with the NAT config where I am trying to masquerade both Wlan1 and Wlan2 to Eth1. It just will not let me connect on WLan1 while I can on WLan2.
Ok, that is EXACTLY the config that I had setup, but I am unable to get out on WLan1, both Wlan1 and Wlan 2 (virtual ap) have assigned DHCP pools. I get the Ip when connected to WLan1 but am not making it to the door. My virtual Wlan 2 is making it out.
Both ip ranges are setup in the firewall rules to Masquerade with Eth1 as the exit.
Note, I am using winbox for now but will start using the CLI as soon as i am comfortable with the OS.
Thanks I will do that., in a nutshell, there should be no reason for me to be able to masquerade more than one interface to a physical interface, correct?
In your situation you only need to masquerade the outgoing interface to the internet. Try to see where communication is breaking down on the WLAN1 network. Make sure that the DHCP server is giving out a default gateway and at least one DNS server on the wlan1 interface. Check this by going to /ip dhcp-server network print. On the client see if you can ping the AP or the default gateway.
VIOLA! i defaulted the routerboard and started over from scratch. All is working as it should now. Even connected my client cpe on the wlan1 side while running my hotspot on the other. absolutely perfect. god i love MT. the only thing I need to do now is figure out how to limit my bandwidth to my cpes. thanks netrat!
