Good day ya altruistic internet peeps!

I am a newbie sysadmin, and I've been given the following task:

The local network of my workplace has been recently refurbished, however the management "forgot" to ask for the new system's configuration in the contract..
We got MikroTik/Cisco switches and a MikroTik RB2011UiAS-IN router would replace our current local gateway; the switches are mostly PnP, and at this point, most of the neccessary configuration is completed on them.

Our gateway however is an other beast!

I am an absolute newbie when it comes complex network equipment configuration tasks, although I have a vague idea about our needs.

We have two ISPs currently available, one of them hands IP's via DHCP (8/2 Mbps connection), the other gives us Static public IP(4 096 / 256 Kbps connection).

I am trying to achieve a dual-wan load balaning configuration, where the two ISP's lines (mentioned above) are both used simultaniously, and in case either service goes down, the router would automatically use the available connection.
I'd also like to use the router's DHCP capabilities to hand out IP adresses to our local non-mobile hosts (mobile hosts are handled via our UNIFI APs); this might change in the future, when I finally manage to refurbish our local server.

I've tried many different guides from YouTube and even some on the official MikroTik wikipedia, but without success.


I'd like to ask for your help guys, on this matter!
If what I ask is just too trivial for you, you could still help me greatly with showing the go-to documentation on the interwebs!

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
– Imre K.

It would be good idea to write what exactly you tried and what didn't work as expected. Good starting point for basic load balancing is http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:PCC.

It would be good idea to write what exactly you tried and what didn't work as expected. Good starting point for basic load balancing is http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:PCC.

Hey there Sir!

Thank you for your aid, I did check that page back when I was looking for solutions, but right now, I am thinking about a more simple way.
I think I'll just do a network with a single WAN and simple failover to other WAN setup, with firewall and dhcp configured.

I might get back to more complex routing configuration later, when I have more knowledge and confidence in the field.

I'll just lobby for a much better broadband solution, than our current one, and with a single failover network, we will at least always have the ability to connect to important services (unlike with the previous network).

Now, let me ask, is there a reliable method to check if an ISP's line is available or not? Because I've read somewhere that even this can be a tricky thing!

Regards,
– Imre K.

Hi,

as i remember there is an attribute, "check-gateway" to "/ip route" which takes as paramaters "ping" or "arp". An example: kind regards,

Hi,

as i remember there is an attribute, "check-gateway" to "/ip route" which takes as paramaters "ping" or "arp". An example:

Code: Select all

/ip route
add dst-address=0.0.0.0/0 gateway=XXX check-gateway=ping  

kind regards,

Hey there!

And can you tell me, how can I add this to the "failover" process?

Hi,

I have never done a failover scenario but i guess adding parameter "distance" should be enough: Might help you this links too:
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Two_gateways_failover
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Load_Balancing

kind regards,