Simpler WAN fail-over setup?

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hello,

I’m trying to set-up a WAN fail-over for my RB450G, and reached a road-block:

Currently, I set-up the fail-over by adding a second default route, metric 2, and checking gateway w/ Ping. However, the connection only fails-over if the cable modem is completely off. And of course This fail-over setup doesn’t work if the modem looses connection to the Internet, but remains ON.

I found this How-To in Wiki - Advanced Routing Failover without Scripting - MikroTik Wiki, but it seems a bit complicated.

Is there any easier way to make each route ping an outside IP address, and not just the gateway to determine whether to disable/enable the route?

Thank You

2

Let me know if you find a solution because I have a similar problem. I have been trying different things but I haven’t succeeded yet

3

Dear more experienced Mikrotik users, could someone please confirm that there’s no other easier way to set-up fail-over than that Advanced Routing Failover without Scripting - MikroTik Wiki

thank you

4

I dont know if this is considered easier, but it can be done with scripting;

http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Improved_Netwatch_II

The only thing that wasnt specified in the wiki was to set a static route to force the ping through your “Default Route” interface.

5

You can do it via scripting, or using netwatch. There is another method to do it without scripting that Chupaka posted on the general forums a while ago, I just don’t have the link available to me right now.

6

Yes, I found this post: http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/best-method-to-load-balance-2-internet-line/37337/15 Is it the one?

I think the easiest for me would be via netwatch, I spent about 2 hours trying to set it up by using, but it seemed that my down/up scripts didn’t work for some reason…

In Chupaka’s “lite” version, I don’t understand what “routing-mark”, “scope” and “target-scope” mean, and what they do. Please clarify.

/ip route
add dst-address=213.180.204.3/32 gateway=192.168.1.1 scope=10 target-scope=10
add dst-address=93.158.134.3/32 gateway=192.168.2.1 scope=10 target-scope=10
add gateway=213.180.204.3 routing-mark=ISP1 scope=30 target-scope=30 check-gateway=ping
add gateway=93.158.134.3 routing-mark=ISP2 scope=30 target-scope=30 check-gateway=ping
add distance=10 gateway=93.158.134.3 routing-mark=ISP1 scope=30 target-scope=30 check-gateway=ping
add distance=10 gateway=213.180.204.3 routing-mark=ISP2 scope=30 target-scope=30 check-gateway=ping

Thank You!

7

http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:IP/Route

I’m not too clear on scope and target scope myself, but I think it’s used to determine how many next-hops are allowed. Someone more familiar with it would need to clarify. I went the scripting path myself to resolve this problem for us as it gives me a few more options. Instead of running netwatch for the IP address testing I have actual scripts running with the scheduler with the scripts doing the ping tests.

As for marks, in the mangle chain of the firewall you can mark a connection for routing. The routing mark basically allows you to specify what route to use in sending out specific kinds of traffic. In order for it to work you need a route with that routing mark specified, otherwise it falls through to the main routing table.

8

Does your cable connection use a static or dynamic IP? And if it’s dynamic, are you being provided with an internal IP address or an external? If internal, perhaps you should have the ISP configure or help you configure the modem to pass through an external IP instead.