Set up a static route in RouterOS

DdeC 20 Jan 2022
Prepared with RouterOS v6.49.2 stable. 


- -

The table shown in IP>Routes>Routes indicates existing routes to various destinations including the default destination 0.0.0.0/0. A new static route may be needed when the intended destination of packets is not local to the originating router nor is reachable via this default destination. 'Static' here refers to the route not being generated by a dynamic routing protocol. 

So this procedure is for adding a static route going to a different network, that cannot be accessed through your default gateway. 

The routing table entry can be made via Webfig, Winbox or, as shown in Ref. 1., via the Terminal.

= =

Add New to make a new entry in IP>Routes>Routes. It only needs the fields 'Address' and 'Gateway' filled in--'Distance' will be set automatically. 

'Dst. Address' is the destination you want to reach, in CIDR format, eg 10.1.1.1/24 for a subnet with 256 addresses, or for a single host eg 10.1.1.1/32. 

The Gateway is the tricky part.

It is an IP address on the current router's LAN, namely, the IP address which terminates the connection to the 'next-hop' router. 

So for a route from router R1 to router R2, when you are entering the route details on router R1, the gateway is the IP address on its LAN of the interface to which it connects on router R2.

This address can be found in the DHCP Server Leases as the address of R2 and may be present in the ARP table associated with the relevant interface.

You may also need to make a change in IP>Firewall on the router R2 to allow the incoming packets.

If router R2 cannot deliver the connection, locally or through its default gateway, to the final destination, a routing table entry on that device may be required for a further hop and so on.  



References

1. Mikrotik Manual:Simple Static Routing
	https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Simple_Static_Routing

Corrections, especially to b m c p @ p m . me, thanks