I’m in process of building a PtP to PtP to PtP (etc.) network. The start location is the office where the ISP connectivity resides. Between the PtPs will be UBNT AirFiber 5XHDs with a MikroTik RB2011UiAS-RM performing any router functions at the site. Each site right now will only have one device (e.g. telemetry data) I’m looking for some guidance/direction on the configuration of the RB as the WAN function won’t be used in this capacity (or will it?). I’m definitely new to MikroTik and the product came as a recommendation from the WISP industry. There will be some informal training as the project gets started but trying to get ahead and build the infrastructure out on the bench first before going to the field and troubleshooting the basics.
I’ve attached a basic diagram of the hops in the process. I’m a network professional, I believe I’m simply overthinking the MikroTik setup.
I do have a static route in play on the internal network to recognize the field gear. The graphic is the concept of the path, there are about 8 more hops along the way, a repeat of the previous.
Based on that diagram it’s not clear whether the wireless devices will need routes as well. You have them interconnecting different subnets, suggesting that they’re routing, but you don’t show addressing on the actual links so they don’t appear to be neighbours. However for the RB2011s it’s reasonably clear, for example the middle on 10.0.1.1 will need the following routes …
I think the numbering plan is not very good.
You best assign /29 networks to each link where the routers and APs on that link each have an address, e.g. like
Then additionally you have some larger network assigned to each router for the LAN.
When the network is that complicated and extendable, I would recommend an autorouting protocol. I use eBGP, others use OSPF.
You only need to assign a different BGP AS to each router and configure the immediate peers on each router (e.g. on 10.0.0.1 a peer is 10.0.0.6)
and define the networks each router knows about (e.g. 10.0.0.0/29 in that case and maybe a 10.0.1.0/24 network).
Then all routes across your entire network will be populated automatically.
This is probably what I need … I’ll describe the grapic in words which hopefully will shed some info on the plan:
Top left - Internet (corp) to FW to Switch to Ubiquiti AF5XHD (AF-Corp 192.168.x.x) AF link to AF1-Site1 (10.0.0.2) … MikroTik RB-Site1 (10.0.0.1) … to AF2-Site1 (10.0.0.3) - this AF points to the next site, none of the locations have internet capability and the function in the background is telemetry so data usage is lite. WAN1 port on the routerboard won’t be used I’m assuming.
One AirFiber 5XHD will catch the inbound from the corp or previous site and a second AirFiber 5XHD will point to the next hop in the chain. Telemetry devices will plug into a UI nano switch and will have static IPs coded per location (site 1: 10.0.0.x, site 2: 10.0.1.x, etc.)
New to MikroTik so will look a couple of videos up on the autorouting protocol. Not sure the network (sites) are that complex - end of the day there are up to 4 end points (maybe 6) that we’ll be monitoring telemetry. (numbering was for illustration - I get where you’re going with the numbering scheme though and will probably borrow this)
Autorouting on Mikrotik routers is a piece of cake. Once you got used to that you will never want static routes anymore!
In case of BGP and without any complicated routing preferences, it just requires 3 things to be setup: the AS number in the default BGP instance, the peers on each router, and the networks (local to that router) you want to distribute.
When you do that on all routers (with the correct AS numbers and addresses, assign a different AS to all routers starting from 65000), it will just work.
Make sure you take the ports you are going to use for links out of the bridge, and assign the /29 IP address to those ports.
The /24 address for the LAN is assigned to the bridge. In a 2011 you would usually be using ports counting down from 10 for the links and the remaining ones from 1 up for the LAN.
(or use port 1 for the internet connection when there is any, and 2 and up for the LAN)
