Hello,

What is the best way to set up a ring network with OSPF? I want to ensure that if one link fails, data will route around the opposite direction.

Thank you,

Remember, cost of ospf link needs to be set in each direction.....

While you can set the cost to fix you immediate problem, there are really only two long term solutions to managing traffic that we tend to use when designing Service Provider networks.

1) BGP - OSPF isn't designed to influence the path of subnets using policy, BGP is designed to do exactly that
2) MPLS Traffc Engineering - This does require a fair amount of complexity to add to the network, but it allows you to manage the exact amount of traffic along a path of next hops that you can specify - regardless of what the routing protocol says.

http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Routing/BGP

http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Simple_TE

I'm definitely looking into BGP. However, I need an immediate fix for the time being. I set the cost on both sides but web traffic still preferred the shorter route.

Have you added the cost up around both sides of the ring to see why it is still taking the original path?

The OP was about traffic movement during link failure that is exactly what a link state protocol such as OSPF is designed to handle. As posted, adjusting the interface/segment costs should allow OSPF to provide the desired failover routing.