Tag Archives: Mikrotik

Logging DSL Line Rate & SNR on a Draytek Modem

Australian Telco, Notes, Software, , , , ,

I am connected on a VDSL line, not by choice, but here we are.
DSL is many things, but consistent it not one of them, so I thought it’d be interesting to graph out the SNR and the line rate of the connection.

This is an NBN FTTN circuit, I run Mikrotiks for the routing, but I have a Draytek Vigor 130 that acts as a dumb modem and connects to the Tik.

Draytek exposes this info via SNMP, but the OIDs / MIBs are not part of the standard Prometheus snmp_exporter, so I’ve added them into snmp_exporter.yaml and restarted the snmp_exporter service.

draytek:
  walk:
  - 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.3.1.8
  - 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.3.1.4
  - 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.5.1.2.4
  - 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.4.1.2.4
  metrics:
  - name: Draytek_dsl_LineRate
    oid: 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.3.1.8
    type: gauge
    help: adslAtucCurrAttainableRate

  - name: Draytek_dsl_Linerate_Down
    oid: 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.4.1.2.4
    type: gauge
    help: Draytek_dsl_Linerate_Down

  - name: Draytek_dsl_Linerate_Up
    oid: 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.5.1.2.4
    type: gauge
    help: Draytek_dsl_Linerate_Up

  - name: Draytek_dsl_SNR
    oid: 1.3.6.1.2.1.10.94.1.1.3.1.4
    type: gauge
    help: adslAturCurrSnrMgn

Then I added this as a target in Prometheus:

  - job_name: Draytek Logger
    scrape_interval: 1m
    scrape_timeout: 30s
    static_configs:
          - targets: ['10.0.2.1']  # My modem

    metrics_path: /snmp
    params:
      module: ['draytek']
    relabel_configs:
      - source_labels: [__address__]
        target_label: __param_target
      - source_labels: [__param_target]
        target_label: instance
      - target_label: __address__
        replacement: localhost:9116  # SNMP exporter address

And then from Grafana I can quantify exactly how bad my line is over time!

Only two dropouts today!

Wireguard in Mikrotik RouterOS

Linux, Security,

Recently I’ve been using Wireguard to fix the things I once used IPsec for.

It was merged into the Mainline Linux kernel late last year, and then in RouterOS 7.0beta7 (2020-Jun-3) the system kernel on RouterOS was upgraded to version 5.6.3 which contains Wireguard support.

Unfortunately this feature is going to stay in the Unstable / Development releases for the time being until a kernel update is done for the stable release to 5.5.3 or higher, but for now I thought I’d try it out.

After loading a beta version of the firmware, under Interfaces I have the option to add a Wireguard interface, for clients to connect to my Mikrotik using Wireguard.

It’s nice and simple to see the public/private key pair (a new key pair is generated for each Wireguard instance which is nifty) that we an use to authenticate / be authenticated.

If we want to configure remote peers, we do this by jumping over to the Wireguard -> Peers tab, allowing us to setup Peers from here.

Obviously routing and firewalls remain to be setup, but I love the simplicity of Wireguard, and in the RouterOS implimentation this is kept.

Being mean to Mikrotiks – Pushing SMB File Share

Linux, Notes, Software,

I’d tried in the past to use the USB port on the Mikrotik, an external HDD and the SMB server in RouterOS, to act as a simple NAS for sharing files on the home network. And the performance was terrible.

This is because the device is a Router. Not a NAS (duh). And everything I later read online confirmed that yes, this is a router, not a NAS so stop trying.

But I recently got a new Mikrotik CRS109, so now I have a new Mikrotik, how bad is the SMB file share performance?

To test this I’ve got a USB drive with some files on it, an old Mikrotik RB915G and the new Mikrotik CRS109-8G-1S-2HnD-IN, and compared the time it takes to download a file between the two.

Mikrotik Routerboard RB951G

While pulling a 2Gb file of random data from a FAT formatted flash drive, I achieved a consistent 1.9MB/s (15.2 Mb/s)

nick@oldfaithful:~$ smbget smb://10.0.1.1/share1/2Gb_file.bin
 Password for [nick] connecting to //share1/10.0.1.1: 
 Using workgroup WORKGROUP, user nick
 smb://10.0.1.1/share1/2Gb_file.bin                                                                                                                                              
 Downloaded 2.07GB in 1123 seconds

Mikrotik CRS109

In terms of transfer speed, a consistent 2.8MB/s (22.4 Mb/s)

nick@oldfaithful:~$ smbget smb://10.0.1.1/share1/2Gb_file.bin
 Password for [nick] connecting to //share1/10.0.1.1: 
 Using workgroup WORKGROUP, user nick
 smb://10.0.1.1/share1/2Gb_file.bin                                              
 Downloaded 2.07GB in 736 seconds

Profiler shows 25% CPU usage on “other”, which drops down as soon as the file transfers stop,

So better, but still not a NAS (duh).

The Verdict

Still not a NAS. So stop trying to use it as a NAS.

As my download speed is faster than 22Mbps I’d just be better to use cloud storage.