When I say basic.... I mean BASIC! A good example would be if D-Link made a $19 router with 24 GbE ports and two 10GbE ports that I could pick up at Best Buy? I totally wouldn't need this thing. But they don't.... So I'm stuck with it.

I can't get it to route a simple packet from port 2 (my laptop) to port 1 (my cable modem).

Lets start with that.... Then I will need to figure out how to manually assign MAC addresses to IP addresses so that the IP never changes on a device.

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Set all ports as slaves to ether2 (in the interfaces configuration, set master-port=ether2)

Put LAN IP address (usually 192.168.88.1/24) on ether2
Put DHCP client on ether1

Configure SRCNAT rule: out-interface=ether1 action=masquerade

Configure Firewall INPUT chain:
1) connection-state=established,related action=accept
2) protocol=icmp action=accept
3) in-interface=ether2 action=accept
4) action=drop (no criteria - just drop everything that hasn't been accepted yet)

Configure DHCP server on ether2 (use the setup wizard after configuring the IP on ether2)

That should be all you need to do.

Ok.... I had to hard reset. I'm in WinBox. First it wiped all IP addresses out (including the default 192.168.88.1) so WinBox restored it.

Mode=Router
Addresses Acquisition=Automatic
Local Network I want to change to 192.168.0.1 As the gateway.

I check both boxes DHCP Server and NAT correct?

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You could also restore factory defaults in the system menu if you want to start off with that configuration instead of a completely blank slate.

/system -> Reset Configuration
Leave all 3 checkboxes unchecked and nothing specified in "Run After Reset" - that should put it back to the out-of-the-box state for you.
The default configuration has a working firewall configuration, dhcp, etc. I'm not sure about working with QuickSet (I messed with it briefly when it was introduced, and quickly moved on because it didn't do what I wanted to do) but you should be able to modify the local network from being 192.168.88.1 to 192.168.0.1 and be done with it at that point.

I did the reset through the touchscreen because I couldn't get into the unit via IP anymore. I screwed something up when attempting to have the DHCP Server assign the same IP's to particular MAC addresses.

I checked both DHCP Server and NAT boxes which I assume was correct.

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The easiest way to make static DHCP leases is to let the device get a dynamic lease, then go into the DHCP server menu, in the leases tab, double click the entry for the device you want a static lease for, and press the "Make Static" button on the information window that pops up.

If you want a different IP than the random one it got, then close the info window and re-open it. Now that it's a static lease, you'll be allowed to modify the fields to your liking. Save the changes and then have the device disconnect / reconnect and it should get its intended static IP.

Well.... I keep loosing connection to it so IDK.... It gives me an IP and gateway but when I try to connect or even ping the gateway I get destination unreachable.

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I was able to connect with WinBox through the MAC address. It cleared out my gateway IP for some reason.... I put it back.

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Ok. So let me see if I can do what you told me in the first post.

I'm not clear on when in the process this happens - is it after you change the LAN IP of the router, or is it after you create a static lease?
In any case, if you change the LAN IP and then get kicked out, try renewing your lease to see if you can get in again.
If not, configure a static IP from the new range, and that should get you in.
Quickset may not update the DHCP server configuration (it should, of course, but since I don't use it, I'm not familiar with its quirks) so go check the IP Pool / DHCP Server->Networks configurations to make sure those are correct for the new LAN IP range.

If it happens after the lease thing, then again, you should be able to use a static IP on your PC to get back in and look around to see what's wrong.

Go to this window and make sure the address, gateway, and DNS servers are correct for your LAN IP range.
In this example, the Mikrotik is going to assign itself as the DNS server, but you could just as easily put 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 in there....
All of those other fields that are blank in the screenshot can be left blank in yours too.

To change the lease time, switch to the main DHCP tab under DHCP Server, and edit the server's configuration - that's where the Lease Time is set.
Also note the name of the Address Pool it's pulling from...

Make sure that the IP pool is properly configured by going into the IP > Pools menu and editing whichever pool is named in the previous screen.

So I attempted to move Master from port 1 to port 2 but it won't let me do that... Right now port 1 is master and all the rest are slaves. Port one has my cable modem.

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What port is configured as the LAN master?

I don't have any hands-on time with CRS platform itself, and some of the switching features there are different than they are in the platforms I've used....
But in general, if you want to change the master from port X to port Y, you must first clear X out of all of the other ports' master=X setting (set them to master = none)
and then once X is not the master for any port, you can go set master=Y for the ports you wish to run slave to Y.

What this does, by the way, is that all slave ports behave identicaly to the master port - just like a 4-port LAN switch interface works on Linksys routers, for instance. Instead of just having a "LAN" interface which appears to be all of those ports, you configure whichever interface is the master port.

Ok. Port 1 says "R - ether1-master" which is connected to my WAN (modem).

Port 2 says "RS - ether2" which is the first port of my LAN and is connected to my computer.

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Apparently it didn't like my DHCP range of 192.168.0.101-192.168.0.200 with a /24 subnet.

I'm not sure how to get around this. I want 192.168.0.2 - 10 to be reserved for static IP. Then 11 - 100 for DHCP reserved IP's.

Is there no way of getting around this?

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That range should be just fine. Don't put the /24 in there though. The mask is determined in the network (scope). The pool is just a range from x to y.

I changed to range to 101-254 and it was ok with that.

So.... The last issue is the throughput... How do I get traffic to pass at a decent speed? I have a 200/20Mbps from TWC and I'm passing barely 40Mbps.... That's when it doesn't error out.

Now, I've read about the queuing settings and changing it to Ethernet from hardware. That resulted in no traffic passing.

Now... I did see several posts say I should get a CCR of I want good routing performance. OK... I didn't realize that going on and Mikrotik clearly thinks this unit makes a usable router. In fact it comes out of the box configured as a router and even explains that in the brief instructions written on the box....

So what setting needs to change to make this a decent router?

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Make the first rule of the forward chain be this:
Connection-state=established,related action=fast track-connection

Make the first rule of the forward chain be this:
Connection-state=established,related action=fast track-connection

Ok. So. This looks like something I do in telnet. So far I've done everything in the GUI.

Do you have the roadmap to these settings?

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Make the first rule of the forward chain be this:
Connection-state=established,related action=fast track-connection

Ok. So. This looks like something I do in telnet.  So far I've done everything in the GUI.

Do you have the roadmap to these settings?

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You can open a terminal window in Winbox if you like - that will give you a command line, but the Mikrotik command line syntax is mapped to the same structure as Winbox, so you can easily do the same thing in Winbox directly. (On the forums, we tend to give advice using command line commands because it's easier to just give the commands that way instead of saying click this, click that, etc)
In Winbox, just go into the firewall rules, click the + to add a new rule, and then fill out the fields with the values from the command I gave:
connection-state=established related (both checkboxes)
chain = forward
action=fasttrack-connection
Then add the rule and finally, drag it to the top of the list, at least until it's the first rule of the forward chain (input rules before it in the list won't matter)