Unicode (UTF-8) in SSID?

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hello,
Is there a way to add unicode characters (encoded as UTF-8) in the SSID in RouterOS? The 802.11 spec does not restrict characters, only the maximum length. I tried to do this from both winbox and SSH but it seems RouterOS ignores the unicode symbols. This already appears possible with other vendors.

2

As per this official answer from a Mikrotik support employee, there is a long way ahead before this even being considered…

3

Hmm, didn’t realize the problem was that bad. Oh well, hopefully it will happen at some point!

4

Managed to get it working through the API, this seems like the only way to do it for anyone else interested in it.

5

Quick test says it works from CLI, if you enter utf-8 bytes like this:

ssid="\C4\9B\C5\A1\C4\8D\C5\99\C5\BE\C3\BD\C3\A1\C3\AD\C3\A9"

In WinBox it looks like typical broken utf-8:
utf8ssid.png
But other devices (well, so far only one old Android phone I had available) see it as correct “ěščřžýáíé”.

6

Well, so it seems it is indeed possible
:slight_smile:

Happy New Year 2017

7

Nice, didn’t realise escape sequences worked in the CLI. Much easier!

8

Made a quick script for encoding UTF-8 as raw character sequences for use in the command line.

https://r-1.ch/mikrotik-unicode-ssid-generator.php

9

I have to admit, this is genius :slight_smile: Thanks for pointing it out.

10

It may be just first impression, but I think it should not be hard to provide proper support for this. Not just for SSID, but everywhere in RouterOS (comments, …). Well, at least partial support.

Currently it seems that RouterOS does not have problem with any input, but it doesn’t really care about anything other than 7-bit ascii:

  • WinBox controls use default system single-byte charset. If you enter any special character, it shows correctly on computers with same default charset.
  • WebFig does not provide any info about used charset, so it depends on browser’s default charset what gets sent to RouterOS. Special characters entered in WinBox do not show correctly in WebFig (some do, but not all). WebFig is not consistent even with itself, enter something, logout, login again and it’s wrong.
  • CLI does not accept special characters at all. But it can show any special characters entered elsewhere as \XX bytes.

So it seems simple:

  • Use UTF-8 as official RouterOS charset.
  • For WebFig, just tell browser that page uses UTF-8 and that’s it.
  • For WinBox, use Unicode controls. Conversion both ways is no problem, there are Windows API functions for it.
  • Keep CLI as is, at least for now. Partly for backward compatibility and partly because it’s for advanced users who can handle seeing byte codes (they didn’t have a choice until now, so it won’t get worse).

I almost dare to say that it should be easy. :slight_smile:

11

This is brillant. Please, don’t “fix” this loophole.
9411CBC5-2AEF-4E93-B0DA-3045D236EEC7.jpeg

12

R1CH
Could you add CAPsMAN SSID generator to the your generator?
I do it manually through a command, but it would be convenient if there was such a function in the generator. I think it will be easy for you
I change ssid name with command
/caps-man configuration set ssid=“xx/xx/xx/xx/xx/xx/xx”
then 0 or network number
Thank you!