I have been using Mikrotik boards for a while as routers, but not wireless. I have used Tranzeo for the majority of my wireless network. I deployed a RB600, 2 XR5 cards(set to AP bridge), and 15 DBI 90 degree sectors at one of my tower sites (3600’ FM Station) last week. I have had equipment there for 6 months (Tranzeo 2.4 - 900) and Mikrotik for router (PPPoe).
I have tried nanostation, powerstation, and Tranzeo TR5 Plus as clients. They all have the same problem. I can ping the AP fine, i can ping google fine so it resolves DNS, but when i try to go to the net with IE or Firefox it just sits there. I have tried PPPoe (95% of customer base), and assigning static. The nanostation i have up has a -63 signal with a noise level of 105. I have the interfaces bridged to eth1. The AP plugs into a switch before the router.
I have reterminated the Cat5 (outdoor shielded) twice on the tower. I have changed every wireless setting i can think of. The signal does not seem to be the problem any where i test. I do not think signal is the problem. I have ran out of things to try, and i am past frustration, so any help will be appreciated.
POP3 times out. I can ping the Mikrotik from the client attached, and from my office via the BH link to the tower.
Although sometimes the router ip will drop out. When it drops i can still ping client from office. Sometimes the XR5 cards timeout but i can still pint the client, and Mikrotik management IP.
SMTP fails to in the same way as mentioned above. I have been working in the wireless industry for 7 years, and i thought i had a pretty good grasp on things. This problem has really got me confused.
Sounds initially like a protocol challenge. ICMP is going through ok, but TCP is not. I would check my firewall and nat settings in the router. Insure you are not blocking tcp. Also insure you have a srcnat masquerade to your public interface for each localnet (or a shotgun masquerade) in your firewall NAT setup.
Thanks for the response. I checked and don’t have any firewall rules set up blocking anything. I also don’t have any NAT rules set up because this router is configured to be a true AP and not a router. In other words, it is a wireless bridge. I do have a private IP address assigned to the bridge interface for management purposes, but that’s all. The radio(s) associated with the AP have public IP address in our IP block, so we don’t need NAT.
I found the problem. The MTU was set to 1480 in the pppoe server settings on the router behind the AP. I set it down to 1452 and everything started working fine.
You deployed RB600’s you say, so you have ROS 3.x in which if you have the Bridging option of Use IP Firewall enabled and in /IP FIREWALL CONNECTION TRACKING you have enabled=no, then the router will not pass fragmented IP packets across the link properly. The default settings on ROS 3.x are to not use IP Firewall for bridging and to have connection tracking enabled, so it’s not a problem. In ROS 2.x, people often disable connection tracking to improve throughput on their wireless links and since you cannot disable Use IP Firewall for bridging in 2.x, you can inadvertently break certain traffic.
Your problem sounded more like MTU though, but I thought I would mention the other to save you the headache later.