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LLM Networking with MikroTik

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Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#41

Post by szszrk »

protocolture wrote: post #19

>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 gene…

> 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.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#42

Post by nubinetwork »

> ... 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.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#43

Post by adamcharnock »

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.

[1] https://github.com/adamcharnock/routeros-diff

[2] https://github.com/adamcharnock/netbox-routeros

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#44

Post by Schlagbohrer »

redeemer_pl wrote: post #33

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

Once AI finds out you are located at localhost, it's all over for your boxen... RIP 192.168.xxx.xxx!

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#45

Post by Schlagbohrer »

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.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#47

Post by gregwebs »

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).

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#48

Post by leoedin »

protocolture wrote: post #19

>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 gene…

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.

Re: LLM Networking with MikroTik

#50

Post by pixl97 »

jve wrote: post #36
mateja wrote: 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

Neat, I'm kicking this off to the web team of the company I work for to see if they can quickly implement this for our documentation.
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