Does anyone of you ZeroTier Guru's out there know, if ZeroTier Low Bandwidth Mode is possible on a MikroTik router?
https://docs.zerotier.com/lbm

Asking as I'm burning lots of mobile data on my metered connection (hAP ax lite LTE6).
No clients connected, no traffic whatsoever, ZeroTier alone using 282MB up and 70MB down within 24 hours.
That's ~10GB per month on a mobile (!) connection.
Absolutely out of question


Any clue if Low Bandwidth mode is possible?
If so - how?

From what I read, most of the traffic generated by ZT (when not sending data) is peer-to-peer keepalive data.
And yes, it can be huge.

Zerotier itself does allows low-bandwidth mode but it doesn't seem to be stable:
https://docs.zerotier.com/lbm/

But nothing to be found about this in ROS.

Options I can think of right away:
- Apply simple queue to ZT interface ?
- If your traffic is mostly outbound, apply a schedule so ZT interface is not enabled all the time ?

Other option:
wireguard ... it can be a very quiet protocol. But you will need at least one public accessible IP address (doesn't even have to be static).

However ... I wonder what is being send over that interface on your device ?
AC3 LTE, total ZT usage over 41d, give or take 0.5Gb, that translates to about 0.4Gb / month.

Options I can think of right away:
- Apply simple queue to ZT interface ?
- If your traffic is mostly outbound, apply a schedule so ZT interface is not enabled all the time ?

"zerotier1" interface's traffic counter likely include attempts at failed paths too - so reading maybe higher from the POV of the select path.

So... generally, another one be setting ("zt1") to only use the "WAN" interface, not the default "all". It's still chatty but no sense in working hard to find a paths via normal LAN/VLAN bridge.

And if you use routes on the ZeroTier controller (my.zerotier.com) side & also have same routes on Mikrotik... You can easily create an ECMP route since the default ZT instance use a distance of 1, which is same a static route. And ECMP will load balance between route with same distance & be a quick way to really increase the zerotier1 counters - to check... look for any "+" next to route status in /ip/route. Changing to ZT instance ("zt1") to a higher distance should be safe and likely desired since you'd like want a normal route used BEFORE a ZT "injected" route.

"zerotier1" interface's traffic counter likely include attempts at failed paths too - so reading maybe higher from the POV of the select path.

The screenshot from TeWe is LTE traffic. That's WAN on his device, I would think ?

Mine is only ZT, including failed attempts.
A lot less. HUGE difference.
So where does the added traffic come from ?

Distance remark and routes is a good one to check, yes.

Yup, I was looking at your screenshot.

More general advice... since there is NOT low bandwidth mode in RouterOS AFAIK. A queue to throttle OP's issue is about what you can do.

But, if the ZeroTier network has a lot of "members"/peers, that also generates more traffic too. Not much you can do other separate out into different ZeroTier networks.

Yes correct, the screenshot is LTE interface and the only WAN interface.
No other clients connected, only ZT up and running - but also no traffic initiated by myself or other clients in ZT network.
ZT simply up and running, but still very chatty while 'doing nothing'.
Other than that, 7.13.5 (=ZT 1.10.3) and default config (purpose: travel router via LTE for a hand full iOS clients)

What was not optimal from my side - to measure LTE interface rather than ZT interface itself (thanks holvoetn for opening my eyes).
I will do another measuring on ZT interface itself to rule out possible other traffic on LTE interface.

In the meantime: holvoetn, are you sure you had no link downs in those 41 days which would cause to reset traffic counters I guess?

I'm pretty sure, yes

Amm0: 5 members in that ZT network, 2 of them other Tik's and not many managed routes defined:


So really basic basic everything, nothing fancy at all

So, another 24 hours measuring - this time ZT interface directly.
~ 2,5GB per month, still very chatty but obviously 'as designed'.


Also, as proposed by Amm0, zt1 instance set to use 'WAN' instead of 'all'.
Not sure if this reduced any failure traffic counting but hey...

Thanks for all your comments and hoping that MikroTik will upgrade the ZT package to a higher version soon.

Thanks for all your comments and hoping that MikroTik will upgrade the ZT package to a higher version soon.

I hope so too, but the current version of ZeroTier in ROS actually supports features like Multi-Path, Low Bandwidth, Trusted Path, as well as hardware AES acceleration.

However, none of these features can be enabled on ROS. The reason is that MikroTik doesn't seem to care about fixing an admin interface for these settings. The specific reasons for this remain unclear.