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 UK MikroTik Support and Consultancy, Third Line RouterOS

Third line RouterOS support and consultancy from in-house UK engineers, with monitoring from the inside

MikroTik puts a great deal of capability into a very reasonable box, and it asks a lot of whoever configures it. GEN provide third line support and consultancy for RouterOS, from UK based, in-house engineers, for businesses running their own networks and for IT teams who need somewhere to escalate.

We are investing in the platform. We keep MikroTik kit in our lab, we have written a native probe for our Oversight monitoring service, and we document RouterOS's inner workings, and what catches people out, in a knowledge base of our own.

  • "BGP has not come back since the RouterOS upgrade"
  • "The CRS keeps logging a loop on one port"
  • "The IPsec tunnel dies whenever it goes quiet"
  • "Whoever built this config has left"
3rd lineA primary support platform for our engineers
30 minFastest response, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
6 and 7RouterOS versions monitored
3Routes into RouterOS: SNMP, REST and syslog

Third Line Support and Consultancy

A RouterOS fault that has reached third line is rarely a matter of a missing rule. It is the interaction between routing, firewall, bridging and hardware offload on a box that will happily do all of them at once. That is the work we are here for, either directly or behind your own IT team when they need another engineer to talk it through with.

RouterOS is unforgiving to set up, and much of what catches people out only shows itself later. An IPsec tunnel left idle, for example, can time out and then wait for traffic from the far end to bring it back, which nobody finds until the first quiet night. A scheduled ping every ten minutes keeps it up, once you know. We write these down as we meet them, so the next one costs you less.

Consultancy runs alongside it. We will design a network with you, review one that has grown by accident, or give a straight second opinion before you commit, including whether MikroTik is the right choice for that job at all.

Typical work

  • BGP and OSPF, and multi-WAN failover
  • WireGuard and IPsec between sites
  • CRS switching, bridging and VLANs
  • Firewall review and hardening
  • RouterOS upgrades planned and rolled back if needed
  • LTE uplinks, and Cloud Hosted Routers

Watched From the Inside

RouterOS gives up different things by different routes, so Oversight uses all of them. The SNMP and REST logins are read only and limited to the probe's address, so neither can change the router.

SNMP: Hardware and Links

RouterOS 6 and 7. Temperatures and voltages, links down and link flaps, PoE state on the ports feeding cameras and access points, received signal on fibre uplinks, LTE signal and reboots. The MikroTik MIB is already loaded, so readings arrive named and in the right units.

REST: Routing and Tunnels

RouterOS 7. BGP sessions and OSPF neighbours, which RouterOS does not offer over SNMP at all, WireGuard handshakes and IPsec peers one by one, and power supply state as a plain ok or fail.

Syslog: What It Says Happened

A syslog sender on your LAN keeps the full record on site and ships only what matters: a loop warning, a router rebooted by its watchdog, a port coming back at 100M. The firewall logging that makes up most of the volume never leaves the building.

A Probe on the Router

An Oversight probe can run natively on RouterOS, so the view comes from inside the site, with no extra box to install and nothing connecting in. We run one ourselves, on a CRS at the core of our own network.

Behaviour, Not Just Thresholds

A router whose memory creeps up for three weeks passes every check anybody set, right up to the day it falls over. Behaviour analysis compares a sensor with its own history and says so while there is still time to plan the fix.

Escalation to a Person

If nobody acknowledges an alarm in time it moves on: your staff, your on-call, then a ticket with GEN with the charts attached. How support and monitoring fit together.

Every Port on Every Switch

SNMP reads one value per sensor, so traffic and errors in each direction on a 48-port switch would take 192 sensors. RouterOS 7's REST API answers for a block of ports in one request, so the same switch takes 12, and watching every port stops being an extravagance. It is running in production today across more than twenty MikroTik switches, gathering traffic and errors per port, per switch.

Those figures build up over time into cumulative reporting, trends and statistical analysis. A port whose runts rise a little more every Wednesday breaks no threshold anybody would set, but it is a cable, a connector or a duplex mismatch telling you about itself, and you can deal with it on a quiet morning instead of a Friday afternoon.

What each port tells you

  • Traffic in each direction
  • Checksum errors: cabling, a dirty connector or a failing NIC
  • Runts and fragments: usually collisions or a duplex mismatch
  • Cumulative figures by port and by switch
  • Trends and behaviour analysis on the ports you choose

MikroTik Support Questions

Do GEN provide third line MikroTik support?

Yes. MikroTik is one of GEN's primary third line support platforms, for businesses running their own networks and for IT teams who need somewhere to escalate a RouterOS problem. The engineers are UK based and in-house, with a fastest response of 30 minutes, 24 hours a day.

Can you advise on a MikroTik design before we buy?

Yes. GEN provide consultancy as well as support, whether that is a design from scratch, a review of something already built or a second opinion before you commit.

Can Oversight monitor BGP and WireGuard on a MikroTik?

Yes, on RouterOS 7, through the REST API. BGP and OSPF sessions and WireGuard and IPsec peers are all watched that way, because RouterOS has no routing MIBs. SNMP covers hardware health, interfaces, PoE, optics and LTE signal.

Can Oversight report traffic and errors on every switch port?

Yes, on RouterOS 7, through the REST API, which answers for a block of ports in one request. A 48-port switch takes 12 sensors rather than the 192 it would take over SNMP. It is running in production across more than twenty MikroTik switches today, gathering traffic and errors per port, per switch. SwOS has no REST API, so the switch must be running RouterOS.

Does monitoring work on RouterOS 6?

Yes, over SNMP. The REST API is RouterOS 7 only, so routing sessions and individual WireGuard peers need RouterOS 7, but hardware health, links, PoE, optics and uptime are all available on RouterOS 6.

Can you monitor a Cloud Hosted Router?

Yes, for links, CPU and routing. A CHR has no temperature, fan, voltage or power supply readings, because those belong to the hypervisor underneath it, so those are watched there.

Do I need a support contract?

No. There is no support contract, no minimum term and no notice period. Customers buy hours at published rates and use them as they need them, or take a fixed price annual maintenance plan if they prefer a predictable cost.

How We Support It

Our engineers are UK based and in-house, with no offshore outsourcing: the specialist who takes your case is the specialist who works it, and they hold the production experience to match the equipment in front of them. Risk is assessed before anything is changed, the SAPR method is applied to every fault, and five shifts a day mean an overnight handover is a conversation between two engineers rather than a note left in a ticket. Our AI runs on our own hardware in our own data centres, and it never writes a word you read.

There is no support contract, no minimum term and no notice period. You buy hours at our published rates, use them when you need them, and what you do not use carries over. How GEN support works sets all of it out in full.