Winbox Howto
Winbox is a GUI application to manage and configure Mikrotik RouterOS. It is be much easier to manage Mikrotik using Winbox than CLI (ssh or telnet or hyperterminal via RS232).
Basically to be able to manage RouterOS using winbox, you have to have basic knowledge about networking, there are good howtos and articles published at www.wiki.mikrotik.com.
There is one pretty awesome thing that we are given for free by Mikrotik - it is an application that dramatically improves the way you manage your network environment system, it is called the dude
As per picture below, once you obtain and run winbox please click the three dots, it should show all available Mikrotik devices. Just click on MAC address (if your PC has different subnet to the address provided in the listing) fill in the username and password and press connect. If you have PC within the same network choose IP address instead of MAC as it works faster and also thy upgrade of RouterOS is much safer (in case you would like to perform one)
Using Winbox on Linux
As for majority of simple software made for Windows Linux is able to run them in wine.
When running Winbox on Linux using wine, sometimes it times out.
This is the case when the firewall is active.
In order to make successful login via winbox via MAC address the following comand should help:
iptables -A INPUT -p udp –sport 20561 -j ACCEPT
If connecting via IP address, then:
iptables -A INPUT -p udp –sport 5678 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p udp –sport 8291 -j ACCEPT
When the firewall is off there should be no issues with connection on any of the above.
Note: If you successfully login and winbox suddenly hang, then try to login via MAC address not the IP address.
WinBOX is a Secure GUI/ Graphical Client used to configure MikroTik Routerboards and CCR routers
Winbox version 3.1.11 has the following features;
- Discover MikroTik Routers /Switches /Appliances in yourcomputers subnet
- Romon connectivity
- Connect to the MikroTik appliance using IP /layer 3 connection
- Connect to the MikroTik appliance using Ethernet /Mac /layer 2 connection
- Connections to the MikroTik appliance can be encrypted for added security
Quick Start Guide
1. Connect your Windows computer directly to the router with an Ethernet cable, or connect them throught a switch.
2. Run Winbox program (Download from above), then click the [...] button.
3. The Winbox tool should find your Router anddisplay it's MAC address. * (If not see some troubleshooting below)
4. Click on the mac address part of the trext in the scan window. This will load the mac address into the connect to text box.
5. Press Connect and the Winbox GUI interface will be loaded up.
6. It is always advisable to configure an IP address on the interface you are connected to on. Once you have a valid ip address on the router that is reachable by your PC you should close down Winbox and reconnect by entering the IP address into the conect to box in in the Winbox loader rather than the Mac address that you originally connnected. the reason for this is whe connected via the Mac layer communication is carried out via broacast traffic. This is a very unreliable method and may cause unexected disconnects from time to time. When you connect via an IP address you will have a more stabe TCP router connection to the router.
TroubleShooting
If the router is not showing up when you click the [...] button the following may be why:
Your Windows firewall may be blocking the Mac Broadcasting - Try turning off your firewall both the windows or any other commericial one that you may have installed, and or try adding winbox to the exception list in your firewall (see notes above)
The above is a tempory fix as it is adisable to configure your firewall to allow the winbox tool to work.
2) Another possible problem is if you are connected throught a managed switch that has broadcast storm control features it may be required to relax the broadcast threshold on the switch as a switch may mistake the large amount of broadcast traffis as a misconfigured network and start to block the traffic
Download winbox from here
