Who else plays with MikroTik?

[cadillackid]

For the last 15 years or so the mikrotik routerboards have been my Swiss Army knife of internet routers. In the last few years they have even perfected their web GUI to be easier to use and more powerful.

At home or in the workplace they can be deployed in everything but the most demanding networks and much cheaper than even lower end consumer devices.

In my busses I use them extensively.. the LTAP mini in the dev bus provides a built in LTE modem along with a sim slot and a wired Ethernet connection. It also has a WiFi device in it which can be used to connect to public WiFi or to broadcast WiFi out.

This device has GPS in it as well so you can make a tracker out of it if you choose.




The WiFi on this model is only N grade however how fast do you need if your WAN is LTE..

This unit also has a serial port so if you wanted to log engine data and push it to a rs232 or you have say a solar inverted you need to talk to via serial it will act as ether to serial device or you can make a script to collect periodic data..

These have a very robust scripting language in which you can do about anything. The GPS tracker, arguably I stole some of the code off the internet for then made my own server and modified it to my own use . Anyway the tracker grabs the GPS coordinates and a script on the mikrotik posts them to my web server..

My ltap also gives me wired for my office phone which the milrotik completes an IPSec tunnel back to my NOC and the phone sees its mother ship. I make and receive calls and all my features work just like I was at an office desk. And without all the expensive software like Cisco requires for their remote phones.



There are many mikrotik models out there , you can even tether a usb hotspot and get WAN from it to a wired connection.

Who else plays mikrotik ??
Christopher

[StatTarget]

Thanks for this post.

I've never actually used MikroTik gear... currently looking at what gear we might want to use in our build. Planning for two connections... AT&T + Verizon (either direct or some random MVNO) so that we have coverage most H^H^H^"everywhere".

Hopefully, others will post their rolling solutions too.

[cadillackid]

I have another MT router with a USB port where i have had both my Verizon and AT&T up and rinning at the same time and running failover.. one dies the other one picks up,,



while Mikrotik you can take it out of the box, turn it on and you have an instant home-style router / gateway, they can be a bit tricky if you want to get more advanced.. there is quite a following on the internet for them. (worldwide). if you want to be a poweruser, their scripting language is robust and allows you to do alot of things out of the ordinary..



the one in my bus opens up a tunnel to my work NOC, and re establishes the tunnel if my cell network flops over to the other service.. oftentimes im not sure which service im running on.. it picks the one with lowest latency (a script checks different hosts for latency)..



Over-kill for most but my work depends on internet so staying connected is paramount..



my next project will be using its GPIO to light a light on the bus dashboard if neither connection works.. that way if im driving and thinking of stopping soon at an exit or rest area or going through a town, ill know right away if I have true connectivity or not .. (meaning npt just do a I have signal bars but is my work-tunnel up and good)...

[kazetsukai]

Originally Posted by cadillackid

my next project will be using its GPIO to light a light on the bus dashboard if neither connection works..

How are you doing connection detection? I could pretty easily do something like this.

[cadillackid]

several ways..



Mikrotik has built in Host PING or ARP response from a host, so for auto failover you can have it test hosts of your choice.. one or many.. and if all fail then it will inactivate a route in the table.. so if your default route is ATT you set it to distance 1.. and set VZW to distance 2.. ATT dies then it inactivates that route.. distance 2 is still up so your outbound traffic goes this way..


second way I do it is to look at my tunnel status.. my script can query to see if my IPSEC tunnel to the cloud is up or down.. I can assume that the internet is reliable if that tunnel stays up.. if the tunnel dies (regardless of whether hosts are pingable or not) then I know that sustainable data isnt possible.. (or that my cloud VPN server has died.. which in and of itself would be reason to light a light on my dash)