5 ms·

The very last paragraph kinda makes me feel bad for MikroTik, but I'd like them to add an auto-update feature to their routers. Probably fix all these issues.

• AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
  An "automatic" update that would potentially cause the router to reboot and bring down the network would go over very poorly with customers, even if it happens at 3 AM. A better solution would be automatically checking for updates, and then sending an e-mail notification to the address associated with the router's owner/sys admin. I "registered" my router and email address with Netgear about a year ago and I was shocked a few months ago when they actually sent me an e-mail to let me know that a new firmware update was available for my router.
  • Klathmon 8y ago
    I don't think automatic updates would be as disruptive as you think. And having the ability to disable them and apply updates manually, combined with some forewarning like you are talking about (an email that says your router will restart tomorrow at 3am unless you do it sooner), would go a really long way.
    • aequitas 8y ago
      Don't forget that a lot of the customer base for Mikrotik is in remote locations (ie: P2P connections in rural areas) or small ISPs. Having the router in your office die on you (even during office hours) is a little different than all your customers call you the same day their only internet connection is gone.
      • icebraining 8y ago
        ISPs would just have to disable it before installing the router. Still seems like a good default.
      • ip26 8y ago
        I used to be a customer of a remote WISP, P2P in a rural area. I can't speak for all WISP's, but we only had service about 12 hours a day, less if it was raining. Five minutes to reboot a router would have been invisible.
        • thejrk_ 8y ago
          I used to contract with a WISP. I would regularly get calls to "reboot the router" from the owner. The "router" was a fiber switch at their CO. I would just do it when they asked. I wasn't a customer nor did I get paid enough to fix their network. Sorry if that was your connection. :)
    • Alupis 8y ago
      A lot of Mikrotik's are installed at WISP's and other ISP's... making unplanned reboots very disruptive. Those of us using them on our corporate networks might be inconvenienced by a temporary outage, but that's unlikely at 3am... however, scheduling and doing these manually is still the best way for enterprise gear.
      • lostapathy 8y ago
        I doubt that most ISPs who can't be bothered to apply security updates are going to notice a 5 minute reboot. Split the difference - email the user that an update will apply on $date unless they do it first, or if they delay it (and don't let them delay it indefinitely).
        • Alupis 8y ago
          You can already script something like this into RouterOS (Mikrotik's OS).
          • lostapathy 8y ago
            Good - they should make it the default!
  • 394549 8y ago
    > An "automatic" update that would potentially cause the router to reboot and bring down the network would go over very poorly with customers, even if it happens at 3 AM. Maybe the the trigger for the automatic reboot could be more complicated than just a time-based trigger. Something like Reboot when localtime > 2AM & localtime < 5AM & traffic averaged over the last 5 min < 5kbs Basically reboot unless the router detects the network is being used actively.
    • macintux 8y ago
      Of course, if you're on vacation and relying on that router to be available for security cameras, an automatic firmware update that results in a bricked router can be more than a little disruptive.
      • 394549 8y ago
        It's a tradeoff. You have to balance that negative against the negative of having botnets of millions of never-patched routers. Automatic updates should be the default, but you should be able to shut them off if you want to make a different tradeoff.
        • TeMPOraL 8y ago
          Automatic security updates should be the default, all other updates should absolutely not. In case of patching routers there isn't much crapware to be upsold, but in general, if we're ever going to develop some code of ethics in this industry, I wish a part of it would be a rule of hard separation between security patches and feature updates, and another rule that the latter should never be done automatically without explicit opt-in. Yes, it's extra work for developers, but the result of not doing that is the present situation - a lot of users, including a surprisingly large population of non-tech-savvy people, will go out of their way to shut down automatic updates, to avoid having to deal with broken workflows, upselling, ads sneaking in, and forced reboots in the middle of a business presentation or a game (or a surgery).
          • 8y ago
  • Tae3cahN 8y ago
    You would only need to reboot if the kernel got updated. Otherwise just restart the affected services. And kernel updates can be made faster with kexec so you don't have to reinitialize the hardware. The flashing procedure itself could also be made interruption-free with dual flash, which most sytems have anyway to avoid bricking the system. It would take some effort to make it fast, but I think the update interruption could be brought down to the second-range. You'd still lose NAT state but that would only affect long-lasting sessions like SSH.
• deleted 8y ago
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• duxup 8y ago
  If they thought their consumer users would just go out of their way to update their routers .... that's just not understanding how humans work.
• deleted 8y ago
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• 24gttghh 8y ago
  I have this functionality scripted for my mikrotik routers, and it emails me when it's updating.
• r1ch 8y ago
  Unfortunately Mikrotik updates tend to change a lot of things and potentially cause issues. Recently the whole bridge implementation was rewritten which required config changes if you had anything beyond the basic bridge/port setup. And the last "stable" update was bricking certain models by making them unbootable. If they were applied automatically then there would be lots of broken routers...
  • sathackr 8y ago
    Yep. They have serious regression issues. Sometimes things that are fixed get broken again, and updates often break other things. Other vendors have similar issues, so it's not just a Mikrotik problem, but while with other vendors it's uncommon, I almost expect it from Mikrotik.