I am not a network engineer but am an engineer, so not totally helpless. I bought a wireless wire on Amazon and it seemed to work very well. But, after a few months the link needed to be power cycled a couple times so I decided to upgrade the routeros on each box. I used winbox to do so and am currently at winbox 3.4 and Routeros 7.15.3 on each unit.
The problem is that the upgrade created an additional MAC for each unit, so my unit that was xxxxx.82 now also has another MAC xxxxx.83 and the same thing happened with the other unit. In addition to MAC xxxxx.86 I now also have xxxxx.87. I can log into all 4 of the MAC addresses with Winbox. Each of the new MAC addresses seems to have the same IP as the old MAC addresses. The units still seem to work but speeds are down and I occasionally get a device on my network that says the network is unstable. I used iperf to test speed across the link between two computers and am only getting 40Mbps.
I believe there are duplicate bridges operating and causing instability. To try to turn one off I used winbox on one of the MACs to go to the bridge tab and disable the bridge. Now the bridge shows up as disabled on all 4 MACs but the performance of the system is unchanged. (I now see this may be because my mesh network found a way around the wireless wire)
Any advice on why this happened in the first place and what I can do to fix it would be appreciated.
Another question is: If I do a factory reset will the devices still be paired or will the bridge need to be set up again from scratch?
Some advice for Mikrotik: If you are going to sell these on Amazon you are going to need support materials for non-network engineers.
My best guess would be that the Admin MAC address is not set. That would explain some of the mentioned behavior.
Could you please share the current config:
/export file=anynameyoulike
Remove serial and any other private info, post between code tags by using the </> button.
Did you, besides RouterOS also upgrade the firmware?
I’m out of town so don’t have access to the units until the new year but I’m afraid your responses are both beyond my understanding, #3 especially. Is the export of the current configuration done from winbox? I may be best off just factory resetting both boxes if I can be sure they will reset to the plug and play condition they were delivered in. If I need to set up the bridge again after a factory reset, I’ll need much more detailed instructions.
Exporting and saving periodically on a PC/NAS/whatever a copy of the export is anyway common good practice, as it is making periodically a backup (surely before upgrading the RoS).
The backup can be restored directly BUT ONLY ON THE SAME DEVICE, the export can be re-imported on other devices as well (actually no, it should NOT be imported but rather copied/pasted in sections) but more than that it is plain text and allows to understand and modify if needed the configuration and to compare it against other ones.
Here are the exports for each MAC. The …82 and …83 configurations are identical, as are the …86 and …87 configurations. The forum code sections don’t seem to have rendered right but each is slightly different from the “wireless wire” configurations referenced above. So maybe the problem is as simple as eliminating the “extra” MAC addresses, but I don’t see a way to do that in winbox. If this might be as simple as “resetting the MAC addresses”, as mentioned above, what is the command to do that? Thanks again for your help.
MAC …86 - station
# 2025-01-03 11:21:27 by RouterOS 7.15.3
# software id = CQJM-QKM1
#
# model = RBwAPG-60ad
# serial number = HF0090DXW5Y
/interface bridge
add admin-mac=78:9A:18:46:4D:86 auto-mac=no comment=defconf name=bridge \
port-cost-mode=short
/interface w60g
set [ find ] disabled=no mode=station-bridge name=wlan60-1 ssid=\
MikroTik-464d82
/interface lte apn
set [ find default=yes ] ip-type=ipv4 use-network-apn=no
/interface wireless security-profiles
set [ find default=yes ] supplicant-identity=MikroTik
/interface bridge port
add bridge=bridge comment=defconf ingress-filtering=no interface=ether1 \
internal-path-cost=10 path-cost=10
add bridge=bridge comment=defconf ingress-filtering=no interface=wlan60-1 \
internal-path-cost=10 path-cost=10
/ip firewall connection tracking
set udp-timeout=10s
/ipv6 settings
set disable-ipv6=yes max-neighbor-entries=8192
/interface ovpn-server server
set auth=sha1,md5
/ip address
add address=192.168.88.3/24 comment=defconf interface=bridge network=\
192.168.88.0
/routing bfd configuration
add disabled=no interfaces=all min-rx=200ms min-tx=200ms multiplier=5
/system clock
set time-zone-name=America/New_York[code]
/system identity
set name=RouterOS
/system leds
set 0 leds=led1,led2,led3,led4
/system note
set show-at-login=no
/system routerboard settings
set cpu-frequency=716MHz
[/code]
MAC …87 - station
# 2025-01-03 11:23:29 by RouterOS 7.15.3
# software id = CQJM-QKM1
#
# model = RBwAPG-60ad
# serial number = HF0090DXW5Y
/interface bridge
add admin-mac=78:9A:18:46:4D:86 auto-mac=no comment=defconf name=bridge \
port-cost-mode=short
/interface w60g
set [ find ] disabled=no mode=station-bridge name=wlan60-1 ssid=\
MikroTik-464d82
/interface lte apn
set [ find default=yes ] ip-type=ipv4 use-network-apn=no
/interface wireless security-profiles
set [ find default=yes ] supplicant-identity=MikroTik
/interface bridge port
add bridge=bridge comment=defconf ingress-filtering=no interface=ether1 \
internal-path-cost=10 path-cost=10
add bridge=bridge comment=defconf ingress-filtering=no interface=wlan60-1 \
internal-path-cost=10 path-cost=10
/ip firewall connection tracking
set udp-timeout=10s
/ipv6 settings
set disable-ipv6=yes max-neighbor-entries=8192
/interface ovpn-server server
set auth=sha1,md5
/ip address
add address=192.168.88.3/24 comment=defconf interface=bridge network=\
192.168.88.0
/routing bfd configuration
add disabled=no interfaces=all min-rx=200ms min-tx=200ms multiplier=5
/system clock
set time-zone-name=America/New_York
/system identity
set name=RouterOS
/system leds
set 0 leds=led1,led2,led3,led4
/system note
set show-at-login=no
/system routerboard settings
set cpu-frequency=716MHz
MAC …82 - bridge
# 2025-01-02 17:40:05 by RouterOS 7.15.3
# software id = G4QP-LN9T
#
# model = RBwAPG-60ad
# serial number = HF00979Z7DC
/interface bridge
add admin-mac=78:9A:18:46:4D:82 auto-mac=no comment=defconf name=bridge \
port-cost-mode=short
/interface w60g
set [ find ] disabled=no mode=bridge name=wlan60-1 put-stations-in-bridge=\
bridge ssid=MikroTik-464d82
/interface w60g station
add mac-address=78:9A:18:46:4D:83 name=wlan60-station-1 parent=wlan60-1 \
remote-address=78:9A:18:46:4D:87
/interface list
add name=WAN
add name=LAN
/interface lte apn
set [ find default=yes ] ip-type=ipv4 use-network-apn=no
/interface wireless security-profiles
set [ find default=yes ] supplicant-identity=MikroTik
/interface bridge port
add bridge=bridge comment=defconf ingress-filtering=no interface=ether1 \
internal-path-cost=10 path-cost=10
/ip firewall connection tracking
set udp-timeout=10s
/ipv6 settings
set disable-ipv6=yes max-neighbor-entries=8192
/interface list member
add interface=wlan60-1 list=WAN
add interface=bridge list=LAN
/interface ovpn-server server
set auth=sha1,md5
/ip address
add address=192.168.88.2/24 comment=defconf interface=bridge network=\
192.168.88.0
/routing bfd configuration
add disabled=no interfaces=all min-rx=200ms min-tx=200ms multiplier=5
/system clock
set time-zone-name=America/New_York
/system identity
set name=RouterOS
/system leds
set 0 leds=led1,led2,led3,led4
/system note
set show-at-login=no
/system routerboard settings
set cpu-frequency=716MHz
MAC 83 - bridge
# 2025-01-02 18:43:38 by RouterOS 7.15.3
# software id = G4QP-LN9T
#
# model = RBwAPG-60ad
# serial number = HF00979Z7DC
/interface bridge
add admin-mac=78:9A:18:46:4D:82 auto-mac=no comment=defconf name=bridge \
port-cost-mode=short
/interface w60g
set [ find ] disabled=no mode=bridge name=wlan60-1 put-stations-in-bridge=\
bridge ssid=MikroTik-464d82
/interface w60g station
add mac-address=78:9A:18:46:4D:83 name=wlan60-station-1 parent=wlan60-1 \
remote-address=78:9A:18:46:4D:87
/interface list
add name=WAN
add name=LAN
/interface lte apn
set [ find default=yes ] ip-type=ipv4 use-network-apn=no
/interface wireless security-profiles
set [ find default=yes ] supplicant-identity=MikroTik
/interface bridge port
add bridge=bridge comment=defconf ingress-filtering=no interface=ether1 \
internal-path-cost=10 path-cost=10
/ip firewall connection tracking
set udp-timeout=10s
/ipv6 settings
set disable-ipv6=yes max-neighbor-entries=8192
/interface list member
add interface=wlan60-1 list=WAN
add interface=bridge list=LAN
/interface ovpn-server server
set auth=sha1,md5
/ip address
add address=192.168.88.2/24 comment=defconf interface=bridge network=\
192.168.88.0
/routing bfd configuration
add disabled=no interfaces=all min-rx=200ms min-tx=200ms multiplier=5
/system clock
set time-zone-name=America/New_York
/system identity
set name=RouterOS
/system leds
set 0 leds=led1,led2,led3,led4
/system note
set show-at-login=no
/system routerboard settings
set cpu-frequency=716MHz
