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1
M etaR OU TER Overview & C onfig ura tion
Brian VargyasBaltic Networkswww.balticnetworks.com
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2Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
Overview of this presentation• MetaROUTER Overview
• MetaROUTER Limitations
• Different Interface types
• Real world application use
• How to make your own with OpenWRT
• How to access the RouterBOARD console port within MetaROUTER
• Demonstration of a running MetaROUTER
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3Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
MetaROUTER Overview• Scalable RouterOS within RouterOS on Atheros/PPC,
x86 Platforms.• Virtual environment allows to user to partition system
into different administrative domains.• Ability to run pre-compiled Atheros/PPC OpenWRT
images• Available since RouterOS 3.21 (4.0 for PPC)
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4Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
MetaROUTER Requirements
• RouterOS 4.3 recommended• Any RB400 / 800/ 1000 & x86 Platform• Each RouterOS instance requires at least
14MB Ram, 32MB Ram recommended• NAND memory requirements minimal (For
RouterOS only)
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5Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
MetaROUTER Limitations & Faults• Only 8 instances per RouterBOARD
• No CF or microSD devices can be used for running images
• No easy ability to export running virtual image back into a file (look in MikroTik fourm for a hack)
• OpenWRT on MetaROUTER won’t properly shutdown when RouterOS reboots.
• Limited by available Ram (256MB on a 450G)
• No ability to monitor running states with Dude Server (Feature Request )• Router on occasion reboots with watchdog timeout error.
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6Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
New for RouterOS V4.0• Routerboard 800 Support• Import Virtual Images with the ability to change
memory size (used to be fixed)
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7Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
MetaROUTER access to the world• Console access through Winbox or CLI interface
• Two different types of virtual interfaces
• Dynamic interfaces used to connect to a bridge group you create
• Static interfaces are used to directly connect MetaROUTER instance to physical port on your host.
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8Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
MetaROUTER Performance• Performance is really good and virtualized
RouterOS and OpenWRT perform very well
Latency increased by a few milliseconds
Expect to take a ~30% hit in packet performance through the MetaROUTER in real world applications
Traffic through static interface slightly better then dynamic interface
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9Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
The MetaROUTER Winbox Interface
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Creating a MetaROUTER
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Dynamic Interface Creation
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Dynamic VIF Interface
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Static Interface Creation
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Console Access
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Multi-Tenant Applications
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16Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
WISP Applications
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17Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
What else can you do?
RouterOS inside RouterOS has some applications, but…..
You want more…..
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18Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
How about your own MetaROUTER where you can run anything you want inside RouterOS?
Sounds good right? Now you can…
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19Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
Make your own MetaROUTER • Import Image feature allows you to import a
special built OpenWRT kernel running busybox shell.
• Basic buildroot image only 2-3MB in size• Lots of packages available, including Asterisk,
SQUID, Apache, PHP, etc.• Opens up a whole world for building embedded
applications on top of RouterOS
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20Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
Where to get OpenWRT
• Start by going to Mikrotik Wiki websitehttp://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Metarouter
• SVN Checkout OpenWRT Image and install on any Linux system
• Install RouterOS Patches for MetaRouter• Make buildroot and it will create a .gz file
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21Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
Steps to run OpenWRT• Copy .tar or .gz OpenWRT image into files• Import file using “Import Image” in MetaROUTER
interface• Wait for import to complete and go into running
state.• Click on running image and then select “Console”• Hit return a couple times…
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22Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
What you should see
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23Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
Getting OpenWRT on the VIF!• Use the following commands in OpenWRT:uci set network.lan.ipaddr=X.X.X.X
uci set network.lan.netmask=X.X.X.X
uci set network.lan.gateway=X.X.X.X
uci set network.lan.dns=X.X.X.X
uci set system.@system[0].hostname=NAME
uci commit
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq stop
/etc/init.d/dnsmasq disable
reboot
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24Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
OpenWRT Serial Port Access• Create a loopback bridge group
• Add dynamic interface in MetaROUTER to your OpenWRT image
• Disable console on Host (/system console disable 0)
• Add (/port remote-access) device with IP address on your bridge LAN
• Have OpenWRT application create a TCP socket to your serial port IP address on Host
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25Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
Online Documentation• Lots of information on MikroTik Wiki
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Metarouter• MikroTik Message Forum
http://forum.mikrotik.com (Click on MetaRouter and Xen Forum link)
• OpenWRT (http://www.openwrt.org)• Baltic Networks (www.balticnetworks.com)
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26Affordable Wireless Solutions - © 2009 Baltic Networks, Inc. – www.balticnetworks.com
Let’s do it again, Live this time!• Going to enable MetaROUTER on a RB450G
(680Mhz Atheros, 256MB Ram, 512MB Flash)• Using only 16MB of RAM for full RouterOS
implementation• Dynamic Interface for Inside Network Access• Static Interface for Outside WAN Connection