Hello everyone,

My first post and my first big problem with mikrotiks!

I run a small WISP (average 50-60 daily users) in my area. I have the following setup

1. A RB1100X2 as my main router, updated today to 6.7. Everything else I mention runs 6.3
2. Radius Manager 4.0.4
3. Both PPPoE and Hotspot clients
4. Two main nodes with a 433 and a 435. The 433 has two 5GHz cards and one 2.4GHz(Two DBII @ 5GHz and 2.4GHz and a 52Hn @ 5GHz). The 435 has three 52Hn cards, one @ 2.4GHz, the other 2 @ 5GHz. The 433 is connected using a link @ 5GHz on the 52Hn in bridge mode with a Groove 5Hn which is connected directly to the 1100. The 435 is connected through a link between a Groove A-52Hn in ap-bridge mode and an SXT 5 Lite in station WDS mode (for some reason I couldn't get it to work in bridge mode, and I think this is where it's messed up) and the SXT's ethernet is feeded to the 435 (I cannot link directly to the 435 because there is no visual). All cards in 435 are in ap-bridge mode. This link is temporary (it was an emergency solution using any equipment I had available due to a very bad storm`and will be upgraded in the next days.
5. Some clients still connect using Engenius 1650's in WDS bridge mode and they are on for almost 3 years so I am upgrading them whenever needed, if it works... don't touch it!)

Clients connect using SXT 5 Lite in station pseudobridge mode with a static IP and they all have TP-Link routers with their PPPoE setings. Some older clients have Engenius 1650 or 5510 (2.4GHz and 5GHZ respectively) in bridge mode as well using again TP-Link routers again in PPPoE mode.

Let me mention that both links (1100 to 433 and 1100 to 435) were updated in the last few days. Before I was using Engenius 5611 in WDS bridge mode which was not the best option maybe but has served me well in the past 2 years. The reason for the change was that I thought the 5611 on the 435 side was losing connection through ethernet (but it was probably the cable going to the 435 after all) and I had already planned to swap them with 2 Sextants to increase bandwidth but the weather caught up with me! There are no double IP's on any CPE.

And now to the tricky part!

The 433 works fine (or I think it does at least), the 435 has the problem. Whenever someone tries to connect (either PPPoE or Hotspot) all the PPPoE clients are disconnected (not the hotspot ones). What I initially saw (I've been trying to figure out what's going on for almost a week!) is that if I manually remove any of the old (Engenius) clients from the 435 (selecting the client in the registered tab and pressing the remove button) a random number of clients (old ones as well) loses connection for a second (connection timer resets) and they reconnect instantly. I thought that this was the only problem till I saw what's happening in the active PPP connections. All of them are reseted, but only the ones connected to the 435 (in all three cards) and not the ones in the 433 and not the hotspot clients (connected to the 435, specifically I connected a couple of phones)

PS. I am network savvy, but I also got (and still getting) alot of help from my supplier who has been working with Mikrotiks for years but we still can't get figure out what the problem is. Any other ideas to improve the setup are also welcome!

Thank you in advance!

I think we have located the problem, some firewall rules were deleted. Shouldn't have happened but it did!

Thanks!

Hi
i think it's better to draw you scenario instead of describe it in text !
also print out your configuration
run DHCP , maybe there's a IP conflict

Add pppoe specific logging on your pppoe-server and repeat experiments.

@ShayanFiroozi

I can see your point! Will do next time!

@AlexN

As I forementioned we've located the problem, only it wasn't just the firewall rules that vanished somehow, but also one of my DSL lines was overloaded (on the upload) thus disrupting the VPN connection to the RM server. All is back to normal now, thank God!

Thanks once again!