Why does winbox work better under Mac OSX than Windows XP

RouterOS General
1

I have had a lot of problems connecting to RB112 & RB532 board at Mac address level - I click the little box at the end of the IP address field and the mac adress scans ok. after selecting the mac address and clicking on connect, winbox will download any plugins it may need loggs on and opens the winbox GUI - then abruptly gives me the little “router has been disconnected” message box. I have three PC’s running Windows XP, one works fine with winbox but the other two both disconnect as soon as it logs in. I have tried statically assigning an ip address to the PC interface, but no improvement. The annoying thing is that the technician I work with has a new mac powerbook and winbox works perfectly for him all the time.

If anyone has experienced this and has a fix I would be very appreciative

2

SHORT: it has only 1 NIC


if i was joking than i would say - because emulator for windows programs on macOS is better written than XP :smiley:


but if serios - you xp machine have 2 NICs connected and that confuses winbox, so it crashes as it connects. try connecting using IP address or disable second NIC while router does not have ip address.

3

i can tell you this:

when ever i see the issue you are talking about (i see it quite often…disconnects or where it will lanuch winbox but everything will be blank…the correct interfaces on the MT box, but no data anywhere)

my solution is to just connect to the MT box in question, via its IP addy…i know this is not always an option but for me it always fixes the issue.

4

MAC winbox or telnet is not reliable, period. Sending broadcasts to every single port on a switch, network, etc is not a good way to communicate. You flood the entire network with broadcasts, and if there are lots of things communicating in winbox it will certainly lose packets. It’s really only there for provisioning and shouldn’t be used in normal conditions.

Sam

5

Thanks for all the replies - the tip from Janisk was most helpful - I did not get winbox to work - but at least managed to get neighbour viewer to connect at mac level :slight_smile: after disabling the other two NIC’s in my laptop. Now I can plug into a new RB and configure it, without having to wait for a Mac to arrive…