I have had a pair of routerboard 230's in service for at least a year running hotspot, dhcp, ppoe server, and normal ip routing. These boards performed great for me. Then one stormy evening they both got hit by static lightnightning (as well as many other pices of equipment including fm/am radio station and cell tower).

So I put up my backup 532 unit online only to have it die the next night. Ok so I can belive it could have been hit the next night as well. Perhaps I had a bad power supply as well..

I ordered four rb112 units with new powersupply's. Install two of them and they would work from 12 to 72 hours. This went on for two weeks. I didn't find any one else reporting lockups. So I started sending e-mails out. About the same time both the reseller that I purchaced these units from and Mikrotik as well reported back. The rb112 is not to be used as your main units they do not have the ram to support all of the services I was wanting to run on them.

Ok.. at least I have an answer. Drop the rb112's on ebay, ordered four 532a's with sr5/sr2 cards, new powersupplies (48v). Set the jumpers and start programing.

The first thing I did was to go to my rb112 and do the "system backup save filename.bak" and transfer the backup file which I assumed would get my rb532a up and running quickly. I would just need to terminal in and set the wireless cards and go over the configuration. But no. This does not work, this will crash your rb532a and make it unuseable. You can not move backup files from unit to another... This just goes all over me, what's the point of backing up the unit if you can't put the backup on another unit? damn...

Ok so i have three rb532a's left. I get the next two out program them up manually clime the towers and I'm up and running... ok for 24 hours now.. the unit on the tall tower is dead. Clime the tower powercycle the unit it's up and running agian. Thers no supout file, and watchdog didn't reboot the unit ether.

I am running dhcp on the ethernet and client wireless (two separate routable networks). I'm running autentication via ppoe and hotspot (both set to use radus) and I'm doing some simple routing. All of the test services and anything not critical to the unit function is turned off.

So whats the deal? What information can I provide to fix this issue before I loose any more very valuable customers to me.

Kind Regards,
Michael Perdue
SmythNet, Owner
276-783-3333

I belive tihs turned out to be several problems but primarly I am guessing.. and I hope somone could confirm.

After climing down the tower my wife noticed the connectiong start/stoping. Going back up the tower and wiggling the connectors I found one of the u.ul connectors to be faulty.

quest is if this connector was shorting out the radio could this cause the mikrotik unit to basicly go dead until a power cycle?

-Michael

I ordered four rb112 units with new powersupply's. Install two of them and they would work from 12 to 72 hours. This went on for two weeks. I didn't find any one else reporting lockups.

We have had lockups with rb112. I mentioned in the routerboard forum that it seems the hardware watchdog may not be working correctly on them.

After climing down the tower my wife noticed the connectiong start/stoping. Going back up the tower and wiggling the connectors I found one of the u.ul connectors to be faulty.

quest is if this connector was shorting out the radio could this cause the mikrotik unit to basicly go dead until a power cycle?

-Michael

We don't run Atheros based AP's, but with the Prism cards, a static glitch will sometimes cause them to go deaf until the AP is rebooted. Disabling the interface won't do it, it takes a cold boot of the AP. I'm assuming that the firmware on the card crashes. It's possible Atheros based cards have the same vulnerability.

Out of curiosity, are you running those 532's with two SR cards at their full output? How long is the cable from the power injector to the AP?

Theory claims that a 532 can power two 400mw cards. In practice, I've seen a 50% success rate, one of the failures actually blew up the 532. I've also seen random reboots when running high output cards and 18V supplies over long lengths of Cat5, switching to 48V made them more stable. Dual high output cards and a long length of Cat5 might still be a problem even with 48V on the cable.

I can confirm that RB532 with 20 meters of 48V PoE and 2pcs SR5 at max power works fine. I`ve installed it almost a month ago and no lockup problems, thanks God

Well at my tower I had rb112 with sr2 and sr5 cards and 12v adapter plugged directly into the rb112. After the lockups I replaced the 12v witha 48v. No change.

Then Mikrotik and my reseller told me that I could not run radius/dhcp/hotpsot/ppoe on the rb112 because it is a CPE (customer premes equipment).

I replaced the unit with rb532a and had two more lockups but then found as I wiggled the tower (guy wired tower) it would fail. Found a bad u.ul connectr replaced it and i've gone 72 hours so far with no problems.

-Michael

mperdue, isn`t SR2 and SR5 in the same RB112 a little too much? I mean a lot of power consumption for that tiny board?
If you can please confirm that it WORKS ok with both cards installed?