HotSpot Setup Howto


This little guide takes you through a step-by-step approach to setting up a simple hotspot using the excellent MikroTik RouterOS software. Some detail and explanations are left out to keep things clearer. This guide assumes that you have installed RouterOS v2.8.7 and upwards.
(The system restores itself to a clean install state and reboots)

Let’s see what interfaces we have on the computer: (You can see that there are two Ethernet ports on this computer, both disabled)
So let’s enable them both: Let’s give the Ethernet ports names, as it’s getting complicated already:
We can now more easily refer to the interfaces by name, which is also easier to remember. Now, let’s set up the address of Ethernet card on the internet side. In this case, we’re going to call the MikroTik box 192.168.1.2 and the gateway (ie the broadband router) as 192.168.1.1 and the DNS given to you by your ISP. In this case, our example is using the DNS from Plusnet of 212.159.13.50
To speed things up a little, you can cache dns requests local to the MikroTik box as follows:
Now set up the hotspot side:
This is a feature that allows remote computers to connect even if they have totally different network settings already set up on them (We have to enter here the IP address of your ISP SMTP server, or otherwise put the address of your local one. If you don’t have one, then just give it an an address on the “internet” side of the MikroTik box)
We enter here the IP address of the MikroTik box on the "internet" side, becasue we have already set up a DNS cache earlier.
(This is the hotspot administrator username and password – keep the details safe) The port that you specify here is the port for Winbox. And that’s about it. Connect to your MikroTik box from either the internet side using the address of http://192.168.1.2:8081 or on the hotspot side (use your admin password).

Download the Winbox from that link, and go to the Hotspot section to manage users.

And there you have it – your Hotspot.

HI THERE THANKS A LOT FOR THE HOTSPOT HOWTO SETUP GUIDE AND IT WAS VERY HELPFULL. CAN U MANAGE ANOTHER SETUP GUIDE FOR THE PPPOE AND I WOULD BE VERY THANKFULL. AGAIN THANKS A LOT AND GOOD LUCK.

Is it possible to setup the Hotspot utility using Winbox? I tried to get it to work for awhile but never succeeded.

Yes, we can setup hotspot thru winbox.

winbox/ip/hotspot/setup.