VRRP 2.9.18 ?

RouterOS General
1

Something is broken in VRRP but difficult to pin down.
Maybe its a compatibility issue between versions?

Here is what works:
VRRP master 2.9.12 + VRRP slave 2.8.28
VRRP master 2.8.28 + VRRP slave 2.9.12

However this keeps breaking things:
VRRP master or slave 2.9.12 + VRRP master or slave 2.9.18

I cant rule out that 2.9.12 is broken becasue it’s been happy working along with 2.8.28 for some weeks now.

Try getting VRRP 2.9.19 talking to VRRP 2.9.12 and you’ll end up pulling hair.

What is broken? Or are the two versions just not compatable since the supposed MAC changes in VRRP in about 2.9.14 ?

FYI we have always used VRRP on VLAN interfaces and the Virtual MAC address is NOT the new ‘private virtual mac’ address it should be…

2

in latest 2.9 versions (since 2.9.13 or so) VRRP was changed to change mac
address of interface according to RFC (it was not doing that before). So it
is possible that new 2.9 versions are not compatible with old 2.9 versions
and all 2.8 versions.

Another issue that is fixed in version 2.9.18 is that vrrp sometimes did not
restore original mac address on interface when it was needed. Bug was fixed,
but it could still be so that you have VRRP mac address set on your
interface. So if you have no VRRP instance running on interface as master,
but ‘/interface ethernet print’ shows that interface has mac-address
something like ‘00:00:5E:00:01:01’ you might have to reset your configuration
to get orginal mac address back. Or if you remember it, remove VRRP instances
from interface, and manually set it, then readd VRRP instances.

3

Cool. Yes they are indeed incompatible from testing on the bench.

FYI Bench testing has also shown that the new VRRP virtual mac address does not work on VLAN interfaces. It still uses gratituous ARP instead. (but doesnt cause any problems)