Hi.
I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask, but here goes:
I have bought a Metal to use it with a small router as a WiFi bridge for weak or remote access points when we’re on our boat. It seemed simple to set up, but I just cant get anywhere with it. Probably simple, but I’m not at all competent with networking issues.
What I’ve done is:
Connected an Ethernet cable to the Metal 52 AC.
Connected the other enc to the POE + data end of the poe injector that came with the Metal.
Connected the data ethernet end of the injector to the laptop, (windows 7)
Connected the power supply that came with it, 12V, to the injector and plugged it into the wall.
This makes the Metal turn on the top diode and blink the bottom one once. After some seconds, the bottom one blinks once again. Some more seconds and it blinks twice while giving one beep and both leds turn off. I have no description of what it’s supposed to do, as the manual is quite literally very thin, (one sheet of paper), but I would assume this is ok behaviour.
The trouble, however, is that when I try to connect to it with Winbox v3.11, I can’t.
I try to connect to 192.168.88.1, which is specified in the papers that came with the Metal.
The [Connect to] field is 192.168.88.1. [Login] is Admin. [Password] is empty.
I click the [Connect] button or the [Connect to RoMON] button with the same result. After about 10 seconds, it says “Error. Could not connect to 192.168.88.1”
I’ve tried the procedure many times, more than 20, also restarted the Metal. Same old story.
So, what next? Any suggestions? And, since I’m no networking guru, please explain in human language.
When your Metal has had time to fully boot up (20-30 seconds) the bottom LED should be lit. This is the LAN LED and indicates that the Metal sees a good ethernet connection between itself and the laptop.
In Winbox you should see a line of information about the Metal (MAC, IP, Identity, etc). I expect that you are not seeing any information about your Metal if the LAN LED is not lit. Is this correct? If it is you may have a bad cable, bad Metal or inadequate power (all the Mikrotik hardware I use comes with a 24 volt PSU not 12 volt) among other things.
You’re right about asuming that I see no info about the Metal in Winbox. I’ve now left the Metal connected for a few hours. No change. It gets a bit warm, maybe 30 degrees Centigrade, about luke warm, but the LEDs stay off and there is no connection or trace to be found in Winbox.
I did indeed get a 24V power supply and tried that first. Same result as with the 12V supply I have connected now. The 12V version came with the router, also Mikrotik. According to what I’ve found, the Metal should run fine from about 9 to 30 Volt, if I remember the numbers correctly. I’ve even read that some boaters get no trouble running it below 9V due to power loss in the cable, which can of course be significant if the cable is long and of questionable quality. I assume that lower Voltage might give a weaker signal, however, so I’ll go for 24 Volts and good cable, when I get it up and running.
Your pointer to the Ethernet cable was useful. I’ve tried two different ones. Both cables are previously unused and look that way. I’ve now tested them by using them to wire the laptop into the router. (Turned off WiFi.) They both give no connection to internet. Maybe both cables are flawed, but I doubt it. My suspicion goes towards the laptop. It’s an old clunker. There might be a driver problem with the Ethernet card, which I wouldn’t notice since I almost allways use WiFi, or the card itself is corrupted, or maybe the connector.
The conclusion so far, is that there is no reason to suspect the Metal itself. There is definitely another fault present. I’ll try to figure out if the network card and driver are OK and then report back here.
Thanks for helping me to think logically!
what you’ve done is not clear to me. maybe i caught you your metal is use as a repeater. if then im right, you should connect your metal to a router. so that it can be access. i am not sure if i am right.
but you use your metal as a access point. you should connect your metal to your modem/primary router or switch.
its all i know from my metal. I am not competent in mikrotik but just try it.
Can you use other router which is already have confugiuration. or just a common router.
If i’m correct (I don’t know the default config of RB Metals) Mikrotik is used to put NAT rules on devices with one ethernet port (like on their wAP’s). So you might try to power it on using the provided poe injector and connect to the device over wifi to reset the device without default configuration).
