So these are my first experiences with mikrotik hard/sofware. I recently bought a router and switch, both mikrotik and setup went well. Enough information to be found to get it going.
Then i bought a cAP ax 1774 (to get the wifi part going) , and this is were I’m really stumped. I can connect (via winbox), i tried the quick setup (no internet, client has an ip adress, but no internet) , i fumbled around with settings, but no matter what i do, i can’t get an internet connection.
Neighbor discovery tells me it has the same ip as the router, but i thought that would change if i set DHCP to client.
The ap got an ip adress from the router, but still, no internet connection. I’m doing something wrong here, and i can’t tell what it is.
I’m sorry if this seems a bit incoherent, but i’m having trouble finding good information on how to set it up correctly.
If i need to add anything to help things forward, please let me know.
I thought it to be somewhat straightforward, but it seems not.
cAP ax with it’s most default setup acts as a router as well … having ether1 set as WAN and wifi+ether2 as LAN. If you want to use this device as simple AP/switch, then you have to reconfigure it. I’ve no idea if there’s an appropriate QuickSet profile, if I’m not much mistaken there isn’t one.
Basically what needs to be done: reset unit to no config (because almist everything has to go away), create one bridge, add all interfaces as ports (both wired and wifi), configure DHCP client on bridge interface (or set IP address, default route and DNS server manually) and configure wifi (SSID, PSK, etc.).
There must be a QuickSet profile available. “Home AP” or “AP” or something like that. Just use that and it should work IMHO. Untick “Firewall Router”, untick “DHCP Server” and untick “NAT”, tick “Bridge All LAN Ports”. Done
There is a Quickset availabe, with “Home AP Dual” as standard option. You can fill in the desired names for the channels, provide passwords, etc. I’d expected it to “just work” after that, but it doesn’t.
Neither on eth1 or eth2.
Yesterday, i plugged it into another switch (netgear) with an Asus router behind it, and it worked… Today i plug it into the mikrotik setup (RB5009 + CSS326) and the desktop doesn’t get an internet connection.
Unplug the ap, reboot the pc, and connection’s back up.
Plug the ap into the CSS and again the ap has no internet connection…
I’ll have a go with resetting the unit, as mkx says. I’ll report back.
Quickset on Mikrotik will probably give you nothing but troubles… What I usually do is I reset configuration without applying default one.
Then when device reboots go to bridge, add new bridge. When that is done go to bridge/ports and add all ports to the bridge (eth1,2 and wifi1 and 2)
Login again and create DHCP client on bridge interface and proceed with configuration of your wireless network.
Also, if you want, you can leave eth2 off bridge, assing IP address to it and use it as off bridge mgmt port. That way if you mess something up you won’t lock yourself out.
This mode makes device a router/AP combo, which is isolating LAN side (all wireless and wired ports except ether1) from WAN side (ether1 port). It works somehow (but adds unnecessary packet processing if device is supposed to be a simple AP, it even causes big problems when there are multiple APs in the nerwork and wireless clients are supposed to roam between them) … with a gotcha: IP addresses on WAN and LAN side have to be unrelated (i.e. they should be from different IP subnets) or else routing between WAN and LAN doesn’t work. By default, all MT devices use 192.168.88.0/24 on LAN side … which becomes a problem if WAN side is served by another Mikrotik using default IP addressing. Other vendors use different IP subnets on their LAN side, that’s why it worked for you when upstream router was Asus.
Thank you for clearing that out. As of now, things are like this:
The RB5009 serves as the wan side, from there it goes to the CSS, where the clients are plugged in.
And the RB has the standard ip range/adress… And that’s where the conflicts resided, if i’m understanding this correctly.
So in quickset i disabled / unticked DHCP Server and disabled / unticked NAT.
Couldn’t find tick “Bridge All LAN Ports” and firewall router though. Looking at the firewall itself made me realize that i need to study this more, before altering/adding options.
For now, it seems to be working. I don’t know if this is the best/safest way to go about, but as a starting point, it’ll do for now. I’m going to have to learn as i go along, because the mt world is very new to me, coming from other routers/switches which don’t have as many options as these have.
Reset to caps mode does exactly that.
But then you still need to disable caps mode and apply wifi settings.
For a new standalone AP that’s what I usually do.
For any MT staffer that might stumble upon this topic: it would really be great if ROS provided QuickSet mode for AP/switch function. (currently used name “Home AP” for another mode is actually misleading as it’s about “home wireless router” and not simply about AP)
After one gets acquainted with ROS, such config is almost trivial, with only a few config lines. But when one gets acquainted with ROS, one hardly ever uses QuickSet. For the rest of users, such QuickSet profile would be very useful. I dare to say that it’d be more useful than e.g. CPE or “WISP AP”.