Winbox Ping Tool shows intermittent timeouts (GUI display issue)

RouterOS
1

Issue Description:
When performing ICMP ping tests to external IPs (e.g., 8.8.8.8) using the Winbox Ping Tool, intermittent "Request timeout" messages are observed. However, the router’s CPU load remains low (around 10–15%), and there is no actual network packet loss.

Root Cause Analysis:
The ping tool in Winbox does not execute directly from the router’s kernel. Instead, it runs as a user-space GUI process within Winbox, communicating over the Winbox management channel.
During interface refreshes or other GUI updates (e.g., viewing interfaces, queues, or firewall rules), this process can momentarily pause, causing fake “timeouts” in the display — even though the real ICMP traffic is normal.

Verification:

Ping tests from devices inside the network show stable results with 0% packet loss.

Running ping from the RouterOS terminal (e.g., /ping 8.8.8.8 count=100) also shows no timeouts.

Only the Winbox GUI ping tool displays intermittent timeouts.

Conclusion:
This behavior is a GUI-level issue rather than an actual network or routing problem. The router continues to forward packets and handle ICMP responses correctly.

Vendor Request:
It is recommended that MikroTik review and optimize the Winbox Ping Tool process to handle GUI refreshes more smoothly — ensuring that ICMP echo requests and responses are displayed accurately without false timeouts during interface updates.

2

I believe I’m experiencing the same behavior, and respectfully disagree with your assessment.

I am seeing this on two CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS devices, no matter what firmware, SFP+ module, or cable configuration, with a bare bones setup with nothing complicated.

I do NOT see this on the RB4011 device I have on hand.

The reason I disagree with your assessment is that in my case, when I’m pinging 8.8.8.8 on the CCR2004, and I see those timeouts, I’m actually experiencing issues. To be clear, the same issues are occurring whether or not I’m doing any pinging, from the CCR2004 or other device.

This shows in Zoom conference calls, which I use every day for work as I work from home. Each time there is a timeout, it impacts ALL interfaces, and my zoom sessions freeze audio and video BOTH until the timeout passes. It’s 1-3% packet loss in the ping utility, meaning this can happen a few times per minute. It can freeze for two seconds or so each time this happens. I don’t see this in other applications, however I think it’s enough for Zoom to exhibit issues. I also see this simultaneously in a pingplotter session pinging from any connected device downstream, so I don’t believe it’s a GUI issue.

The RB4011, which does not exhibit this behavior at all, can do 2500 pings to 8.8.8.8 with zero issue, and zero issue in Zoom. I have been troubleshooting this for a month since I got the CCR2004, and after getting a second one to rule out an individual router hardware issue, I’m convinced it’s a much larger issue either in the CCR2004 itself, just the revison 4 hardware, or a bug in RouterOS with that specific device.

See my forum post for more info - CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS freezing and packet loss

Edit - I also created a video of this behavior for Mikrotik to help my troubleshooting. I’m seeing the same timeouts you report in the UI in the terminal ping as well, and you can see I’m pinging 8.8.8.8 from the CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS, I’m pinging 1.1.1.1 from my windows machine command line, and I’m also pinging zoom.us from a pingplotter session, and you can see correlated drops across everything when the router is having this issue. This happens no matter what you ping, and everything downstream is impacted. I think using Zoom during this is what got me to notice it, as it was enough to cause audio and video freezing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm2jXH2GFlc