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LLM Networking with MikroTik

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Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#11

Post by doubleg72 »

alanwreath wrote: post #3

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 m…

What possibly could you even be talking about? Networking gear already works together due to standards.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#12

Post by x2tyfi »

alanwreath wrote: post #3

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 m…

Probably a routing issue. Shot in the dark would be that one of these routers is NATing traffic, and the other router doesn’t have a route to that NAT’d range.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#13

Post by tonyarkles »

x2tyfi wrote: post #12
alanwreath wrote: post #3

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 m…

Probably a routing issue. Shot in the dark would be that one of these routers is NATing traffic, and the other router doesn’t have a route to that NAT’d range.

Other shot in the dark, misconfigured bridging or similar where ARP isn’t getting forwarded and rewritten quite right

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#14

Post by abound »

arjie wrote: post #10

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 have the agent write a script that is aimed to be idempotent and then run the script.

You can take this one step further and have the agent write Terraform configs [1]. I did this (including having the agent import all the initial resources from the live device), works great and is generally more robust than a script.

[1] https://github.com/terraform-routeros/terraform-provider-rou...

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#15

Post by arjie »

abound wrote: post #14
arjie wrote: post #10

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 have the agent write a script that is aimed to be idempotent and then run the script. You can take this one step further and have the agent write Terraform configs [1]. I did this (including having the agent import all the initial resources from the live device), works great and is generally more robust than a script. [1] https://github.com/terraform-routeros/terraform-provider-rou...

I originally wrote specific terraform providers (even one for just configuring an Ubuntu machine), but over time I found that TF is a bit too heavyweight for my use-cases. The shell script works well because state divergence can be investigated by the LLM. The slowness of state refreshing etc. does make a TF apply painful. For me at least.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#16

Post by dools »

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

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#17

Post by dools »

arjie wrote: post #10

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.

> As agents get better, it can be a textual representation rather than a script, but for now that suffices

I can’t see any reason to have agents do what a script can do. If the operation is deterministic then why pay every time it gets done? This is why MCP seems so pointless to me.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#18

Post by arjie »

dools wrote: post #17
arjie wrote: post #10

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.

> As agents get better, it can be a textual representation rather than a script, but for now that suffices I can’t see any reason to have agents do what a script can do. If the operation is deterministic then why pay every time it gets done? This is why MCP seems so pointless to me.

It's adaptive and can handle config drift if someone has altered the machine in the meantime between script invocations. Not required if you're disciplined, of course.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#19

Post by protocolture »

>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"?

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#20

Post by protocolture »

x2tyfi wrote: post #9

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 workfl…

>LLMs are great in both areas.

Nuance. LLMs are just going to report that they cant SSH to an endpoint, after delivering your vibeconfig, and throw it back to you to resolve connectivity. Your velocity with LLMs will stall at break fix every time.

>AI makes AMAZINGLY good network operations triage agents, since they are able to immediately process so many signals.

I have seen a lot of tokens spent on solutions that could have just been grafana.

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