Setup for Beginning your Mikrotik Routerboard

This is the basic things for those of you who are new in use Mikrotik Routerboard, so do not think that is difficult or complicated to do, it's a very simple process, but something that fundamental you should know to setup your mikrotik routerboard. Or maybe you just want to compare me how to setup your mikrotik router from the beginning. If you can understand about this, it will get rid of your fear in experiment and exploration using mikrotik routerboard system.

Suppose that you just bought a new mikrotik router, or lost password or maybe you want to reset your router system because of any reasons, so this is the notes to complete mikrotik theme in this blog. Well, perhaps a little bit different from the way of yours, let's compare it!

1. Reset the Configuration Default System of Mikrotik Router

Reset here means to restore mikrotik router system to the default setup configuration. As in windows operation system, this process is restoring the windows system into the backup system that existing or have ever made. All the rules that you have created previously will be removed, including the network settings you have. In some other cases, reset is needed to refresh the mikrotik system for the conflict rules inside the router system that ever made. So to make complex system rules such dual wan load balancing, i suggest you to reset from the initial mikrotik that will be used.

Look at the picture above on the part that I marked by the box with dotted line! there is any hole as the reset panel button. We start from the state the mikrotik without power.

2. Beginning the Basic Configuration of the Mikrotik Router

You can use one of the fifth existing interfaces to be connected to your ether/lan card on pc using lan cable, the pc that you use to setup for beginning configuration of your mikrotik. You need to configure the IP address of ether/lan card on pc that connected to the router using automatic or dynamic ip address, shown as the picture below!

   

For now you are already connected with the router and you can start configuring the router using winbox client software. If you don't have it, please download winbox! And you can click on the part I marked in red shown as the left picture below! at the winbox login. Here we use dynamic ip address of the adapter to access winbox, you must click on MAC Address of the router gateway. Starting the system in blank configuration, we are going to choose Remove Configuration that you found after you have login via winbox it shown like the right picture below!

  

After that the router requires to reboot the system automatically, because we have removed the default configuration, and you need relogin to access the router that now have an ip address 0.0.0.0, don't access  it through this address, just click on the mac address of the router to login. The state now is really clean of the system that without any configuration. You can see the blank configuration as shown below!

  

You've been able to put the lan cables of the internet source (wan1 and wan2), mains cable of local area network (lan1) and the proxy cable. So the arrangement of lan cables as shown like the top picture (wan1, wan2, proxy, and lan1). No matter if you change the position of lan cables arrangement to the router interface. What is important to remember that where the cables as wan1, wan2, proxy, and lan1.

Next we will begin the mikrotik basic configuration depending on the network system that you to build. Assuming that lan cables arrangement have installed like the top picture, you need to give the names of interfaces accordance with the order. You click on interfaces of the main menu winbox as shown like the left picture below then you have to change the name of ether1, ether2, ether3, ether4 to be wan1, wan2, proxy, lan1 by click on the interface names and renamed it, so it would be like the right picture below!

  

After changes of the interface names, then we are going to define the ip address of each interface names. For more quickly, just copy the script below in accordance with the ip address of each interface that you have defined and go to New Terminal of winbox menu and paste in there!

/ip address
add address=172.16.1.2/24 interface=wan1
add address=172.16.2.2/24 interface=wan2
add address=172.160.1.1/24 interface=proxy
add address=192.168.1.1/24 interface=lan1

Here we enter the ip network of each interface, while the ip address of wan1, wan2, and proxy itself  is just use one of  ip address, that is:

If you've entered the script above, then you have already to configure the network for all interfaces, the router need to reboot the system again, and we've been able to change the ip address of the adapter that we use for the beginning configuration in accordance with the network interface used, as shown like the picture below!

The adapters that used in the beginning configuration now is connected the lan1 interface with network ip 192.168.1.0/24, for now we can use the static ip address 192.168.1.8. And you can access winbox via ip address 192.168.1.1 as the ip gateway of the network 192.168.1.0/24. When you login the Winbox again, you will find the address and routes list as shown below!

Then you just need to make the rule of firewall nat, that will allow you to access the internet from all units pc on the network. For example if you are only using 1 internet source from ISP to make it accessible to network 192.168.1.0/24, the rule of firewall nat  would be like this, and don't forget to make the route of the gateway!

/ip firewall nat
add action=masquerade chain=srcnat out-interface=wan1 src-address=192.168.1.0/24 disabled=no comment="Masquerade Public Traffic"

/ip route
add dst-address=0.0.0.0/0 gateway=172.16.1.1

I think it's pretty obvious about setup for beginning your mikrotik routerboard, with the interface, address, and route list configuration. After this we can start to apply ECMP Load Balancing with Automatic Routes Failover.