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LLM Networking with MikroTik

blog.greg.technology

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Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#21

Post by dools »

arjie wrote: post #18
dools wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Seems like a recipe for an expensive disaster to me!!

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#22

Post by HDBaseT »

doubleg72 wrote: post #11
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.

You still would need to know how networking fundamentals and how network protocols work.

Just because standards like DNS, NAT64, OSPF, ARP, etc, exist doesn't means its easy to get these things to communicate.

Ubiquiti isn't exactly known for being the best in terms of standard adherence, especially with their historically week IPv6 support.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#23

Post by BOOSTERHIDROGEN »

briHass wrote: post #5

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…

I hope for XDP too.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#24

Post by bombcar »

tonyarkles wrote: post #13
x2tyfi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or look for something mangling SRV records, Minecraft seems to use those more regularly than everything else.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#25

Post by brookst »

doubleg72 wrote: post #11
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.

LEGOs fit together because they have standards. That doesn’t mean they self-assemble.

Networking can be complex. Standards allow interoperability but they do not magically make everything work with no configuration.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#28

Post by mannyv »

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.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#29

Post by mateja »

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.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#30

Post by timurlenk »

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.

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