Two CCR2116-12G-4S+ Won’t Respond to Winbox or DHCP — Normal Behavior?

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

I bought two MikroTik CCR2116-12G-4S+ units from Amazon (shipped new, sealed, main Prime One Day listing for the product). I expected to be able to plug in a Windows computer and configure them easily, but I’m stuck — neither router seems to respond at all.

I’ve tried with two different Windows machines, different cables, and different ports — both routers behave identically.

1) Winbox (v4.0 beta 18):

I connected directly via Ethernet to port ether1. Most of the time, no neighbors appear. Occasionally I see:

MAC Address: F4:1E:57:5A:57:7E
IP: 0.0.0.0
Identity: MikroTik
Version: 7.15.2
Board: CCR2116-12G-4S+

But when I try to connect via MAC, I get: “ERR: Could not connect. MacConnection syn timeout.”

2) IP Configuration:

When connected directly to either router, both Windows machines get a 169.254.x.x APIPA address in ipconfig, which ChatGPT says suggests means there is no DHCP server is running on the router and no IP address is being assigned

Windows Computer 1:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.32.55
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Windows Computer 2:
Link-Local IPv6 Address : fe80::cebr:b86e:8432:656b%19
Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.206.143
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

3) Static IP Attempt:

I manually set one Windows computer to:

IP: 192.168.88.10
Subnet: 255.255.255.0

Then tried to ping 192.168.88.1 from it while connected to the router, but I got: Reply from 192.168.88.10: Destination host unreachable.

I see the quick start guide suggests you do this as well, but with 192.168.88.2, so I tried that from the other computer with mask 255.255.255.0 but that also can’t ping 192.168.88.1 or load it in browser.

Questions:

  • Is this normal behavior out of the box for CCR2116 units?
  • Do these routers come completely blank with no IP/DHCP/default config?
  • Is there something else I should try to access them (e.g. serial console - would need a cord)?
  • Should I expect to need Netinstall just to configure them the first time?

The lights are flashing, the fans spin, and the devices do appear alive, but I can’t seem to connect to either of them at all.

I’m not a networking expert, so apologies if I’ve missed something obvious. I tried getting advice from ChatGPT and Grok but neither could figure it out either. Any help would be much appreciated!

2

Hi,

Try to use ether13/Eth/Boot port with the default static mikrotik range (anything beside 192.168.88.1 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0)

3

You nailed it! That works at least on first glance. I can now get 192.168.88.1 to load in web browser.

It’s funny because I checked again and the quick start guide clearly says “Connect your PC to the Ethernet1 port” but based on this experience it seems like it should be to connect to “ETH/BOOT”.

Is this normal or a quirk of the model or batch? Either way thanks.

4

“SoHo” devices come with a default configuration with ether1 as WAN and all other ports as LAN. (this is what you have and that causes the behaviour you reported).

Professional devices usually ship with no configuration, maybe the CCR2116 is an exception and has one or maybe this has changed with some new version/release of either the RoS or of the device.

Good find, adding this to #22:
http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/gp-csa-for-mikrotik-devices/182176/1

5

I have found myself in a similar situation where the old Winbox version would work (while v4 indeed gives the similar error).