I locked myself out of my mikrotik router the day I got it. Since then I have been very careful to not make any changes which I haven’t seen on a guide or that i don’t know what they do.
The way I locked myself out was by disabling ‘bridge’ in the Interfaces → Interface → Bridge section.
I clicked on the bridge at the top of all the ethernet ports and clicked Disable.
This made me lose connection to my router and even turning it off and back on I couldn’t connect.
I factory reset the unit and was able to connect again.
I guess once you make the ports all into a bridge, the bridge is the first thing you connect to when you plug your ethernet cable into a port. So if you disable it, even plugging directly to an ethernet port its blocked?
You can work with “SAFE” mode to prevent the kinds of f*ckups, or take 1 interface OUT of the BRIDGE-config and put an IP-address on it, like 10.10.10.254 (while your bridge for example would be 192.168.1.254)
That way, if you ever screw up “Bridge” , plug in the designated ETH-port, put 10.10.10.1 on your laptop and you can connect again.
So yeah, you make a connection to an IP-address that happened to “sit” on your Bridge-interface. If you disable that Bridge, obviously you loose everything.
Consider the Bridge-IP as you management IP / default gateway from your internal network
There exist also a way to connect on “Layer 2” (MAC) but you need to enable a service for that. Also this would continue to work if you break L3/IP-interface/Bridge config
Thanks I will keep trying to remove it from the interface and put an IP on it.
To do that you just go to Bridge → Ports → Delete Ether7 (for example) , then go to IP → Addresses → Create new address → In the entries, leave ‘Network’ blank, and fill in 10.10.10.254 for Address, and select Ether7 for the interface. Now, even if I disable the bridge or do anything to the router, I can simply connect an ethernet cable to Ether7, and be able to access Winbox, is that correct? Or is there more stuff you have to do?
Thank you for the help I am completely new to Mikrotik routerOS..
Ethernet interfaces connected as port to the bridge are slave interfaces.
(With an S in the first column in the table)
Your ether1 probably is still the default WAN interface, where the firewall will prevent all incoming connections.
By setting the bridge down, you downed ether2 till ether10. And if the firewall was not altered ether1 is still handled as WAN interface.
If you did not set IP-restrictions under the /ip service/winbox (to limit from which IP’s you can connect) and the same for a /system/users (on a user, you can also set from which IP’s it can login) you should only check the firewall INPUT-chain (INPUT = traffic targetted at router itself, Winbox for example)
Make sure you have some rule allowing ether7 (or source-IP 10.10.10.0/24) to target the the RouterOS control plane.
And that should be it, give it a try to connect PC to ether7 after giving it 10.10.10.1 , connect with Winbox and disable your Bridge you won’t get kicked out.
10.10.10.254/24 as an address on the router.. With nothing else set (DHCP server for example), set your computer to IP 10.10.10.253/24, and then yes, 10.10.10.254 and Ether7 will work.
Another option is “Neighbours”, that should still work with your original situation.
Serial console is another.
The bridge interface has the IP (192.168.88.1/24), so if you disable the bridge, you will lose the IP.
My first suggestion is to try using Neighbours though. In the default RouterBoard configuration, it should work on any interface except Ether1.
Okay so you need to create an IP address 10.10.10.254, assign it to the interface Ether7, then statically modify your laptop/PC to be 10.10.10.253/24, and then it will work
From what I remember I couldn’t connect even with neighbours after disabling the bridge for ethernet ports 2-10, I could be wrong though
Now connect my ethernet cable to port 7 and to my laptop.
On windows 10 go to Network Connections → ethernet 2 → properties → ipv4 settings → properties → Use the following IP Address
IP address: 10.50.50.253
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default gateway: 10.50.50.0 or 10.50.50.1 (neither works)
Click OK, then close.
Nothing shows up when I click Neighbours and refresh.
If I connect back to my mikrotik via a different port it works fine (note I am trying to configure a port to be able to save me incase my other ports are disabled like before)
Are you talking to me…
If so words are meaningless unless you provide the config, I have no confidence in your ability to follow directions or infer that you did things correctly from your written text.
I need proof/evidence of what you have and very happy to work from that.
/export and ensure you dont use real ISP WAN IP numbers…
By setting the bridge down, you downed ether2 till ether10
Please read again. You cannot connect to an interface that is down. If an ethernet port is a slave interface to the bridge, bringing down/disable the bridge will disable that ethernet interface, as long as it is a slave to the bridge.
Removing the bridge would be something totally different than disabling.
Never tested it, but I suspect it will not disable the ethernet interfaces in that bridge/switch group, but will disable any bridging/switching so you will lose connection to other devices, and also disables this CPU access via the ports in that bridge, hence reason you will not be able to access device itself via those ports
Disabling the bridge, do not disable also the eterhet ports.
You can lose the management access because, for example MAC winbox are set to reply only on bridge, and on ethernet work until bridge are active.
Disabling the bridge, both configured MAC winbox, and “IP” winbox ae unable to find anything to link to…
Bridge delivers L3 features, for the ethernet interfaces as ports.
Giving IP address, DHCP services, etc to such an ethernet interface is considered " misconfiguration" in the wiki. But it can be done and is often done (Even sometimes it is set by Quickset !)
So just looking what happens .. when the Bridge is disabled.
Well ROS is smart enough to release the interfaces from the bridge.
But the IP address of the bridge is invalid now (disabled bridge), and also of the VLANs on the bridge.
My WAN port (ether5) is not on the bridge, with a FW rule to allow me to come in with WinBox. So I can change and peek without losing connection.
Ethernet ports on the bridge (1 to 4) are practically unusable for IP.
WinBox Neighbors does show the router with 0.0.0.0 IP address on ether1, and can be connected through there via MAC!
Normal setup … (ether1 is LAN connected, ether5 is WAN connected)
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Bridge disabled … (find the differences)
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you won’t get kicked out.
