I have had a pair of routerboard 230's in service for at least a year running hotspot, dhcp, ppoe server, and normal ip routing. These boards performed great for me. Then one stormy evening they both got hit by static lightnightning (as well as many other pices of equipment including fm/am radio station and cell tower).
So I put up my backup 532 unit online only to have it die the next night. Ok so I can belive it could have been hit the next night as well. Perhaps I had a bad power supply as well..
I ordered four rb112 units with new powersupply's. Install two of them and they would work from 12 to 72 hours. This went on for two weeks. I didn't find any one else reporting lockups. So I started sending e-mails out. About the same time both the reseller that I purchaced these units from and Mikrotik as well reported back. The rb112 is not to be used as your main units they do not have the ram to support all of the services I was wanting to run on them.
Ok.. at least I have an answer. Drop the rb112's on ebay, ordered four 532a's with sr5/sr2 cards, new powersupplies (48v). Set the jumpers and start programing.
The first thing I did was to go to my rb112 and do the "system backup save filename.bak" and transfer the backup file which I assumed would get my rb532a up and running quickly. I would just need to terminal in and set the wireless cards and go over the configuration. But no. This does not work, this will crash your rb532a and make it unuseable. You can not move backup files from unit to another... This just goes all over me, what's the point of backing up the unit if you can't put the backup on another unit? damn...
Ok so i have three rb532a's left. I get the next two out program them up manually clime the towers and I'm up and running... ok for 24 hours now.. the unit on the tall tower is dead. Clime the tower powercycle the unit it's up and running agian. Thers no supout file, and watchdog didn't reboot the unit ether.
I am running dhcp on the ethernet and client wireless (two separate routable networks). I'm running autentication via ppoe and hotspot (both set to use radus) and I'm doing some simple routing. All of the test services and anything not critical to the unit function is turned off.
So whats the deal? What information can I provide to fix this issue before I loose any more very valuable customers to me.
Kind Regards,
Michael Perdue
SmythNet, Owner
276-783-3333