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LLM Networking with MikroTik

blog.greg.technology

31–40 of 61 posts

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#31
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...

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#32
post #29

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.

Thanks for sharing, this is a great improvement (also and especially for human use! Renders much better on mobile phones compared to Confluence).

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#34
post #29

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.

Finally the Confluence pages were really bad.

Thankfully at least LLMs could figure out things t help me setup SXT LTE 7

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#35

Interesting that sending things like network configurations, keys, and credentials to external entities - which BTW are fueled by data - is considered "ok" now.

Yeah, the thought of having private keys and config slurped up by an LLM provider keeps me away from this kind of direct work.

Perfect job for a local LLM!

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#36
post #29

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.

The page you linked to has a TOC for LLMs: https://manual.mikrotik.com/llms.txt

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#37
post #15
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How big is your TF state on your routers?

Yeah, TF is slow if you have thousands of configs and batching not integrated in the provider.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#38

Interesting that sending things like network configurations, keys, and credentials to external entities - which BTW are fueled by data - is considered "ok" now.

Is there anything here that suggests that? You are jumping to conclusions easily.

It's nowadays the default not to export any credentials when exporting MT configs, and even doing that yourself is trivial. Since the equipment is pretty packed with functionality and very flexible, benefits of LLM assistance is big.

As for "sending network configurations" it's a risk everyone needs to consider individually. Having that private may make attackers job harder, but security by obscurity ain't no replacement for a secure setup.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#39

Interesting that sending things like network configurations, keys, and credentials to external entities - which BTW are fueled by data - is considered "ok" now.

When I was setting up Wireguard server at home, the last step (after testing the setup) was the LLM giving me a set of commands to run manually to regenerate the credentials.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#40
Mikrotik also has a safe mode for testing configuration

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.

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