I want something similar to this but for Ubiquiti. I don’t need anything fancy, just something that audits my home config and tell me if I’m doing something stupid, dangerous, or both.
Yes! Recently connected two disparate systems (ubiquiti and mimrotik) using their exposed API’s and a Claude session so that systems I have on either environment could talk to each other. I am not a network engineer so it was liberating to get my gear working together. That said it’s a work in progress and just today I noticed something weird that one of my computers can’t access Minecraft servers while the rest of my network can
I would expect LLMs to be especially excellent at configuring Mikrotik stuff, given MT publishes markdown reference docs for LLM ingestion, the full config without secrets can be dumped to one text file, and their cli commands are very stable between versions.
I switched recently to OpenWrt from MT, which code agents are also good at. I'd wager most issues are going to be related to the user not specifying what they want clearly enough. The translation from network concepts to RouterOS config is pretty 'fat-free', so there's not much room for hallucinations beyond syntax errors, which can be verified via the API.
It’s interesting to observe and build LLM-driven solutions in Networking.
The biggest challenges that most of us networking people have are around velocity (how fast we can build and scale networks) and how effectively we can operate them (avoid defects, fix them fast when something breaks).
LLMs are great in both areas. AI helps with deployment challenges by speeding up tooling development and the creation of workflows on orchestration platforms. A manual process step today, say - reserving an IP address in an IP DB — is automated the next day instead of on a backlog for years. This post is an example of that (config-gen/config-deploy).
Operations use-cases are more interesting, IMO, and address the “too many signals” problems that we face. Network substrate telemetry, overlay telemetry, service host metrics, service metrics, customer metrics, recent change data, prior alarms - the list goes on. Being a network operator is not for the faint of heart and is under-mentioned on high stress job lists. AI makes AMAZINGLY good network operations triage agents, since they are able to immediately process so many signals.
I only have the agent investigate directly. To actually configure the Mikrotik, I have the agent write a script that is aimed to be idempotent and then run the script. Investigation is fine, but the script acts as a memory of intent which I find useful. As agents get better, it can be a textual representation rather than a script, but for now that suffices.
I’ve been using ChatGPT to configure my mikrotik gear for about a year it’s pretty awesome. And the end result is well documented reusable scripts rather than my usual set of random stack overflow copy pastes and shitty inscrutable notes
>One of the usual complaints about MikroTik has been its complex ui/configuration. In a sense, I don’t know if that’s true inasmuch as networking is complicated in itself
Really? Its standard point and click engineer stuff. The biggest issues with Mikrotik are the features not implemented in the gui, or the way config is interpreted between versions. Also the term of hardware support, and generally flaky code in general.
>The point I’m trying to make is yeah, networking can just be hard. I’ve been half-networking, amateur-ishly, for a while now - setting up networks for friends and friends’ offices, making cables, patching small panels etc. I almost certainly couldn’t pass an official “Certified Routing Engineer” cert - well, not without studying a lot (believe in yourself).
Ok so just a hobbyist perspective.
It seems like this article is just "Point an LLM at your mikrotik api, have fun"?
> Really? Its standard point and click engineer stuff.
Really. UI is easy. CLI is easy. But system exposes everything to you. It doesn't hide any complexity. So you need to actually know what you are doing, as happily clicking randomly won't produce any reasonable result.
> Ok so just a hobbyist perspective.
No need to diminish those experiences. That's how most of us got into the job. And enterprise experience ain't exactly a guarantee of wide knowledge.
My issue with Mikrotik is that the UI puts all the complexity up front. A good UI should guide the user and reveal relevant information only as it's needed. Mikrotik doesn't do that.
For example, the most common reason I want to connect to my home router is to see what devices are connected, what their IP addresses are, and perhaps make their DHCP leases static. In a good UI that sort of common activity would be front and centre - in MikroTik it's buried under 3 levels of menu.
Under the IP menu is 26 alphabetically sorted options, of which I have to click "DHCP Server". Then the default page is to create a new DHCP server - why would I want to do that? How many users run multiple DHCP servers? I have to click on the "Leases" tab, and then I can see a list of my connected devices.
Every other home router I've used knows that users care about the connected devices, so show it front and centre.
>For example, the most common reason I want to connect to my home router is to see what devices are connected, what their IP addresses are, and perhaps make their DHCP leases static.
You sound like a Windows user who just found his way into Active Directory.
>in MikroTik it's buried under 3 levels of menu.
Its buried 3 levels deep in a hierarchy, the hierarchy you need to learn to operate the system. Quickset is Mikrotiks concession to "Oh wow some users at home are operating these tools". But the tools aren't aimed at home users.
>Then the default page is to create a new DHCP server - why would I want to do that? How many users run multiple DHCP servers?
Me for one haha.
>Every other home router.
Right I think this is your problem right here. "Every apple I have ever eaten I could bite through the skin" is a weird criticism of an orange.
The mikrotik gui is an abstraction of the CLI. Its really good that way so when you are recovering a mikrotik at a remote site you dont need to think too hard about where IP/DHCP Server is from the command line even if you are a gui native.
>A good UI should guide the user and reveal relevant information only as it's needed.
Ok so 99.99995% of all Mikrotik RouterOS devices do not end up in peoples labs.
Even the devices that are homeish in capability are mostly deployed into apartment buildings as NTD's and managed via API/Ansible not by the occupant.
The cheaper routerboards, like the 2000 series, are almost entirely eaten by Wisps.
When you configure a new RouterOS device the use case is non obvious.
It might be an edge router that needs BGP to be stood up first.
It might be a tower router that needs only OSPF, or full stack BGP/OSPF/MPLS.
Maybe its going in a data center to terminate a bunch of VPLS tunnels or VPNs.
It might be an NTD/NTU or it might be a bodgy relay.
I had a customer that would deploy small form routerboards as ethernet regenerators when doing really dodgy cabling.
You are not the target customer. Its cool and good that as a hobby you dipped your toes in. But its a very long stretch to turn around and complain that the interface isn't good enough because it doesn't hold your hand the way you would like it to. Mikrotik offers training and certification for people who cant work it out.
This is the networking version of raising a fault with the linux kernel because you don't want to compile it, you just want the exe.
And no, theres not a potential solution in Mikrotik having a separate code base for non technical people. They cant manage the code they already have. "Its coming in ROS7" was a meme for the better part of a decade. We are almost completely done with "This feature doesnt work on this CPU" which plagued them for ages.
Asking RouterOS to be more like DLink or whatever it is you are more comfortable with is insane and I hope fervently you never encounter JunOS which is the absolute godlike gold standard but will likewise not hold your hand to help you setup your DHCP config.
The important thing you need to do is specify which Mikrotik version you're using; apparently the syntax for some things changed between 6 and 7.
It does pretty well, but you need to iterate. I was trying to get it to disallow internet access for non-DHCP clients, and in the end there were so many limits to what was possible that it wasn't worth it. But it did it, and when I was testing I found them.
So like everything for best results you need to know what you're doing so you can test effectively...but it saves you from learning the syntax etc.
MikroTik recently updated their documentation site from an Atlassian Confluence Wiki to much more AI-friendly Docusaurus here: https://manual.mikrotik.com/
Any page can be easily converted into Markdown by appending .md to the URL. I mention this because in my experience, the agent is much more accurate when it has access to the docs.
A word of warning, my experience with mikrotik in the WiFi-6 space has been overwhelmingly negative, both in a single AP setup at home and on a corporate WiFi network managed by someone else.
Bugs, random drops, poor performance on some machines. It is not set and forget and I gave up on it.
I've been doing some of this too. It's great just messaging claude in discord when I want to make a new device's IP static. I also put my mikrotik config sans passwords in (local only) version control, just in case.
And perhaps it's significantly easier on other routers, but I would not have gotten VLANs working without claude doing it for me...
Interesting that sending things like network configurations, keys, and credentials to external entities - which BTW are fueled by data - is considered "ok" now.
> ... WinBox (which to my surprise is now cross-platform, and works quite well on Macs)
Winbox having a Linux and Mac version is really nice... I'll have to try the Linux one at some point... hopefully it works as good as the Windows version did under wine.
I've been a long-time fan of Mikrotik. I even ran an ISP on it a fair while ago. I have a couple of archived GitHub projects if they are useful to anyone:
- Router OS Diff - Can diff two configs and give you the commands needed to bring the existing config up to date with the desired config. It's certainly not perfect, but a starting point of anyone needs something like this. [1]
- Netbox Routeros – A netbox plugin for updating the config of RouterOS devices directly from the Netbox interface. [2]
It has been many years since I touched these, but perhaps they will be of interest to someone.
Aside from that, I have had excellent experience with Mikroik. Everywhere from in-datacenter to it running in an off-grid hut on a mountainside. I've even heard reports of people finding rain streaming through a CRS and it just happily ticking along.
LLMs as tech support is such a game changer. I have a fun complicated home network with a Mikrotik and a NAS and my desktop and laptop plus various radios and Raspis, and there's no way I could configure the extremely complicated RouterOS on my Mikrotik without AI. The speed is also helpful. Previously if my network went down I would have to wait until the next weekend to fix it because it would take me all day. Now I can get things back up in an hour or less.
MikroTik is one of the only companies that sells a router without WiFi at a non enterprise price. Useful for me to completely turn the power off at night to a separate WiFi (router in Bridge mode).
28 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 54.4 ms ] threadI switched recently to OpenWrt from MT, which code agents are also good at. I'd wager most issues are going to be related to the user not specifying what they want clearly enough. The translation from network concepts to RouterOS config is pretty 'fat-free', so there's not much room for hallucinations beyond syntax errors, which can be verified via the API.
The biggest challenges that most of us networking people have are around velocity (how fast we can build and scale networks) and how effectively we can operate them (avoid defects, fix them fast when something breaks).
LLMs are great in both areas. AI helps with deployment challenges by speeding up tooling development and the creation of workflows on orchestration platforms. A manual process step today, say - reserving an IP address in an IP DB — is automated the next day instead of on a backlog for years. This post is an example of that (config-gen/config-deploy).
Operations use-cases are more interesting, IMO, and address the “too many signals” problems that we face. Network substrate telemetry, overlay telemetry, service host metrics, service metrics, customer metrics, recent change data, prior alarms - the list goes on. Being a network operator is not for the faint of heart and is under-mentioned on high stress job lists. AI makes AMAZINGLY good network operations triage agents, since they are able to immediately process so many signals.
Exciting times!
Really? Its standard point and click engineer stuff. The biggest issues with Mikrotik are the features not implemented in the gui, or the way config is interpreted between versions. Also the term of hardware support, and generally flaky code in general.
>The point I’m trying to make is yeah, networking can just be hard. I’ve been half-networking, amateur-ishly, for a while now - setting up networks for friends and friends’ offices, making cables, patching small panels etc. I almost certainly couldn’t pass an official “Certified Routing Engineer” cert - well, not without studying a lot (believe in yourself).
Ok so just a hobbyist perspective.
It seems like this article is just "Point an LLM at your mikrotik api, have fun"?
Really. UI is easy. CLI is easy. But system exposes everything to you. It doesn't hide any complexity. So you need to actually know what you are doing, as happily clicking randomly won't produce any reasonable result.
> Ok so just a hobbyist perspective.
No need to diminish those experiences. That's how most of us got into the job. And enterprise experience ain't exactly a guarantee of wide knowledge.
Yeah like I said, ENGINEER.
>No need to diminish those experiences.
Yeah but it certainly diminishes the criticism.
For example, the most common reason I want to connect to my home router is to see what devices are connected, what their IP addresses are, and perhaps make their DHCP leases static. In a good UI that sort of common activity would be front and centre - in MikroTik it's buried under 3 levels of menu.
Under the IP menu is 26 alphabetically sorted options, of which I have to click "DHCP Server". Then the default page is to create a new DHCP server - why would I want to do that? How many users run multiple DHCP servers? I have to click on the "Leases" tab, and then I can see a list of my connected devices.
Every other home router I've used knows that users care about the connected devices, so show it front and centre.
You sound like a Windows user who just found his way into Active Directory.
>in MikroTik it's buried under 3 levels of menu.
Its buried 3 levels deep in a hierarchy, the hierarchy you need to learn to operate the system. Quickset is Mikrotiks concession to "Oh wow some users at home are operating these tools". But the tools aren't aimed at home users.
>Then the default page is to create a new DHCP server - why would I want to do that? How many users run multiple DHCP servers?
Me for one haha.
>Every other home router.
Right I think this is your problem right here. "Every apple I have ever eaten I could bite through the skin" is a weird criticism of an orange.
The mikrotik gui is an abstraction of the CLI. Its really good that way so when you are recovering a mikrotik at a remote site you dont need to think too hard about where IP/DHCP Server is from the command line even if you are a gui native.
>A good UI should guide the user and reveal relevant information only as it's needed.
Ok so 99.99995% of all Mikrotik RouterOS devices do not end up in peoples labs.
Even the devices that are homeish in capability are mostly deployed into apartment buildings as NTD's and managed via API/Ansible not by the occupant.
The cheaper routerboards, like the 2000 series, are almost entirely eaten by Wisps.
When you configure a new RouterOS device the use case is non obvious.
It might be an edge router that needs BGP to be stood up first.
It might be a tower router that needs only OSPF, or full stack BGP/OSPF/MPLS.
Maybe its going in a data center to terminate a bunch of VPLS tunnels or VPNs.
It might be an NTD/NTU or it might be a bodgy relay.
I had a customer that would deploy small form routerboards as ethernet regenerators when doing really dodgy cabling.
You are not the target customer. Its cool and good that as a hobby you dipped your toes in. But its a very long stretch to turn around and complain that the interface isn't good enough because it doesn't hold your hand the way you would like it to. Mikrotik offers training and certification for people who cant work it out.
This is the networking version of raising a fault with the linux kernel because you don't want to compile it, you just want the exe.
And no, theres not a potential solution in Mikrotik having a separate code base for non technical people. They cant manage the code they already have. "Its coming in ROS7" was a meme for the better part of a decade. We are almost completely done with "This feature doesnt work on this CPU" which plagued them for ages.
Asking RouterOS to be more like DLink or whatever it is you are more comfortable with is insane and I hope fervently you never encounter JunOS which is the absolute godlike gold standard but will likewise not hold your hand to help you setup your DHCP config.
It's an alternative webUI for Mikrotik routers, coded with LLM assistance.
It does pretty well, but you need to iterate. I was trying to get it to disallow internet access for non-DHCP clients, and in the end there were so many limits to what was possible that it wasn't worth it. But it did it, and when I was testing I found them.
So like everything for best results you need to know what you're doing so you can test effectively...but it saves you from learning the syntax etc.
Any page can be easily converted into Markdown by appending .md to the URL. I mention this because in my experience, the agent is much more accurate when it has access to the docs.
Thankfully at least LLMs could figure out things t help me setup SXT LTE 7
Bugs, random drops, poor performance on some machines. It is not set and forget and I gave up on it.
And perhaps it's significantly easier on other routers, but I would not have gotten VLANs working without claude doing it for me...
There is also a terraform provider. Not sure if there is a safe mode here. I normally test via ssh safe mode and import the changes afterwards.
Winbox having a Linux and Mac version is really nice... I'll have to try the Linux one at some point... hopefully it works as good as the Windows version did under wine.
- Router OS Diff - Can diff two configs and give you the commands needed to bring the existing config up to date with the desired config. It's certainly not perfect, but a starting point of anyone needs something like this. [1]
- Netbox Routeros – A netbox plugin for updating the config of RouterOS devices directly from the Netbox interface. [2]
It has been many years since I touched these, but perhaps they will be of interest to someone.
Aside from that, I have had excellent experience with Mikroik. Everywhere from in-datacenter to it running in an off-grid hut on a mountainside. I've even heard reports of people finding rain streaming through a CRS and it just happily ticking along.
[1] https://github.com/adamcharnock/routeros-diff
[2] https://github.com/adamcharnock/netbox-routeros
Super light, right now testing on my own set up (was using mktxp before):
https://github.com/jutaz/TikTelemetry
Comments/feedback welcome!