Best of the ISP-Lists

Fixed Wireless Equipment

Mikrotik Heat Issue Solved

A member of our ISP-Wireless list reports a problem with Mikrotik boards, and then gets the solution from Mikrotik support.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [July 25, 2008]

On the ISP-Wireless list in July, TJ wrote:

With temps now hitting 95°F in the late afternoon, we are seeing several [Mikrotik] RB333 boards shut down and/or reboot. Once it cools down, they go back to running fine.

We have seen 5 boards out of 50 we have installed fail.

They are all in DCE cases. Just wanted to share with everyone in case they are seeing strange problems with these boards.

[JB replied] "We're in the process of removing all of our RB333 units from outdoor use, retiring them to indoor use without wireless cards. This is due to problems with them rebooting at random. All are running 3.10 with 2.14 firmware."

After further discussion about general solutions to heat problems, TJ returned to the list with the solution:

After emailing Mikrotik tech support about the heat problem, their simple solution seems to have fixed our heat problem. By turning down the CPU speed from 333mhz to 266mhz, we haven't had a problem for 3 days.

The command to do this is:

/system routerboard settings change-frequency frequency=266

You then have to POWER CYCLE the board (not just reboot). Also, you have to be running the latest firmware (2.15) on the routerboard.

But his news was already superceded, as SK wrote:

Latest firmware for the RB333 is 2.16. It just came out. I am looking for the change log.

I had the same issue with the RB600 and I just got this reply.

Try upgrading to RouterOS 3.11 and to 2.16 firmware. There have been many changes since 3.2 including memory leak fixes. 2.16 RouterBoot was supposed to fix a rebooting problem.

—End