MikroTik Manager

A self-hosted control plane for your entire MikroTik fleet.
Monitor, configure, and safely change routers, switches, and access points — from one web interface.

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Contents

• What it is
• What makes it different
• Screenshots
• Get running in five minutes
• Features
  • Safety and change protection
  • Monitoring and operations
  • Switching, VLANs and wireless
  • Firewall and network services
  • Visibility and troubleshooting
  • Fleet operations
  • Access control and platform
• Reference
• Contributing
• License

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What it is

MikroTik Manager gives a whole fleet of RouterOS devices a single management surface: live monitoring, client tracking, VLAN and wireless configuration, firewall management, firmware rollouts, backups, and traffic analytics — without logging into WinBox on each box in turn.

It runs entirely on your own hardware via Docker Compose, talks to devices over the RouterOS API (and SSH where RouterOS requires it), and stores nothing outside your network.

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What makes it different

Plenty of tools can show you a MikroTik fleet. The hard part is changing one safely.

RouterOS will happily lock you out of your own device

RouterOS applies every command immediately and independently. There is no transaction, no rollback, and no cross-object validation — so it will accept a change that severs the very path you are managing it over. MikroTik's own documented advice for enabling VLAN filtering is, literally, to have a serial console ready.

That is the problem this project takes seriously. Three layers address it, and they are the reason this platform exists rather than another dashboard.

🛡️ Change Guard — the device rescues itself

Before applying a risky change, the device saves a restore point and arms a scheduler to reapply it. The change goes in, then reachability is proven on a brand-new connection. Confirmed, and the scheduler is disarmed. Unreachable, and the device restores itself and comes back — unattended, with nobody driving to the site.

Verified end to end on a CRS running RouterOS 7.23.3 by deliberately deleting a switch's own management address:

T+0      restore point saved, revert scheduler armed, change applied
T+0s     device drops off the network
T+40s    manager gives up after 4 fresh connection attempts and reports back
T+120s   device restores its own backup and reboots
T+3m     device is back, change undone, scheduler and restore point gone

It runs entirely over the RouterOS API, so it works on devices with no SSH credentials configured, and it covers twelve change types — bridge VLAN filtering, port PVID and tagging, bridge VLAN add/update/ delete, IP address add/remove, route add/remove, bond create/delete, and management service toggles.

🔮 Lockout prediction — a warning that names the actual mechanism

Rather than blocklisting operations someone once thought were dangerous, the platform reads live device state, works out how the manager actually reaches the device, simulates your change against it, and reports any invariant that flips from satisfied to violated.

The ingress port comes from the bridge forwarding table and the manager's own address from the device's connection tracking, so the warning is specific enough to act on:

This change is predicted to cut management access to 2GT-NW-100G. Management arrives untagged on sfp28-1 (PVID 1) — the gateway's MAC is learned there — but VLAN 1 has no bridge VLAN entry listing bridge1 as an untagged member.

A predicted lockout is refused outright. Overriding a critical verdict means typing the device name, and the change still runs under Change Guard.

🩺 Config Health — finds what RouterOS accepted but never applied

A standing, read-only audit for configurations RouterOS takes without complaint and then quietly ignores. It encodes MikroTik's documented Layer 2 misconfigurations — an IP address or VLAN interface on a bridge slave port, a bond slave that is also a bridge port, MTU above L2MTU, a PVID that frame-type=admit-only-vlan-tagged renders inert, management surviving only on a dynamic VLAN entry, and more.

Every finding explains what it does to your network, how to fix it, how long it has been there, and links the relevant MikroTik documentation.

And the rest of the toolbox

Staged firmware rollouts	Canary waves, pre-upgrade backup, reboot verification, and halt-on-failure so a bad build never reaches the fleet
Built-in NetFlow collector	Traffic analytics with per-client attribution and application breakdown — no external collector to run
CAPsMAN aware	Centrally provisioned APs are recognised, grouped under their controller, and protected from local writes the controller would discard
Rogue AP detection	A foreign BSSID broadcasting one of your SSIDs is flagged as an evil twin
Anomaly insights	Client counts and CPU compared against each device's own same-hour 14-day baseline, not a fixed threshold
Enterprise auth	OIDC/SSO, TOTP two-factor, role-based access, and scoped API tokens

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Screenshots

Device list	Device overview
Switch ports & throughput	Hardware monitor
Network topology	Wireless radios
Client tracking	Client detail
Event log	Backups
Sign-in, with optional SSO and two-factor

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Get running in five minutes

You need Docker with Compose v2, and MikroTik devices running RouterOS 6.x or 7.x reachable on their API port (8728, or 8729 for API-SSL).

Option A — pre-built images (recommended)

No source checkout, no build toolchain.

# 1. Grab the compose file and environment template
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/2GT-Media-Group-LLC/mikrotik-manager/main/docker-compose.ghcr.yml
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/2GT-Media-Group-LLC/mikrotik-manager/main/.env.example
mv .env.example .env

# 2. Set your domain in .env (secrets auto-generate if you leave them unset)
#    CORS_ORIGIN=https://manager.example.com

# 3. Start
docker compose -f docker-compose.ghcr.yml up -d

Open https://localhost (or your server's hostname) and sign in with admin / admin. Change that password immediately under Settings → Users.

Updating: docker compose -f docker-compose.ghcr.yml pull && docker compose -f docker-compose.ghcr.yml up -d

Option B — build from source

git clone https://github.com/2GT-Media-Group-LLC/mikrotik-manager.git
cd mikrotik-manager
cp .env.example .env       # edit CORS_ORIGIN for production
docker compose up -d

First run builds the frontend and backend, initialises PostgreSQL and InfluxDB, and generates a self-signed TLS certificate. Accept the browser warning, or upload a real certificate under Settings → TLS Certificate.

Updating: git pull && docker compose up -d --build backend nginx — migrations run automatically on startup.

If a device won't connect

API access is usually enabled already. If not:

/ip service enable api          # port 8728
/ip service enable api-ssl      # port 8729, TLS

Devices on the SSL port are reached over TLS automatically — RouterOS's default self-signed certificates are accepted, so credentials are encrypted in transit with no manual trust step.

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Features

Safety and change protection

The layers described above, plus the surrounding machinery.

• Change Guard — device-side auto-revert on twelve change types, over the RouterOS API, no SSH required
• Lockout prediction — live-state simulation that refuses a change predicted to sever management, with the hop chain that explains why
• Config Health — scheduled audit for RouterOS's documented Layer 2 misconfigurations, surfaced on the device's Security tab and in the dashboard
• Firewall lockout guard — refuses an unscoped input-chain drop/reject that would lock you out, requiring explicit confirmation
• CAPsMAN write protection — a provisioned radio is owned by the controller, so local SSID creates, edits and deletes are refused rather than silently discarded
• Capability probe — POST /api/devices/:id/change-guard/probe reports what safety mechanisms a device actually supports, tested rather than assumed, and leaves nothing behind
• Guard history — every protected change recorded per device as committed, reverted, or failed

What you see when auto-revert fires

The request returns HTTP 200 with guard.auto_reverting: true and "Contact with the device was lost while applying this change. It is restoring itself and should come back shortly." — not an error.

This matters: the most dangerous changes sever the very connection carrying them, so the API call times out even though the change succeeded on the device. Reachability, not the exception, decides the outcome. A change that throws while the device is still reachable is a genuine failure, and the guard is disarmed immediately so nothing reboots for nothing.

Two consequences worth knowing before relying on it:

• Binary mode reboots the device to restore. That is the price of a restore that recovers deleted interfaces exactly. Script mode (/export + /import) avoids the reboot but is additive, so it cannot recover a deletion.
• The restore point is saved before the scheduler is armed, so a rollback returns a configuration containing neither the scheduler nor the change. Self-cleaning, and a revert loop is impossible.

Monitoring and operations

• Live dashboard — device counts, wireless clients, active alerts, fleet-wide 30-day availability, device-type distribution, firmware notifications, and a historical client graph (1h → 30d)
• Operations view — a second dashboard mode built for running the network:
  • Things to handle — a server-side insights engine, severity-ordered: offline devices, pending firmware, CPU/memory pressure, missing backups, connectivity flapping, WiFi quality problems, and Config Health findings
  • Quick actions that actually run — discovery, back up all online devices, sync config, or open an in-browser SSH terminal, each with inline progress
  • Capacity & health — per-device CPU and memory meters sorted by pressure
  • Security posture rollup — fleet hardening score and the lowest-scoring devices
  • Anomaly insights — each device's last 30 minutes of client count and CPU compared against its own same-hour-of-day 14-day baseline, flagging ≥2.5σ deviations plus error-log bursts
• Availability tracking — per-device uptime %, outage count, and longest outage over 30 days
• Alerts — device up/down, CPU/memory thresholds, certificate expiry, firmware available, log errors and warnings, new device discovered, and config drift, each with cooldowns
• Delivery channels — Email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, and ntfy (self-hosted or ntfy.sh, with severity mapped onto ntfy priority so outages break through do-not-disturb and recoveries stay quiet)
• Maintenance windows — one-time or recurring (cron) windows per device that suppress alerts automatically

Switching, VLANs and wireless

• VLAN management — create, edit and delete VLANs; per-port membership with tagged/untagged control
• Per-port connected clients — selecting a port shows who is physically on it. Uplink and trunk ports are auto-detected (via an LLDP/MNDP neighbour, MACs spanning multiple VLANs, or a high MAC count) and show an explainer rather than every MAC reachable through them, with one-click disclosure of the full table
• Copy VLANs between switches — a three-step wizard with click-to-cycle port assignment, conflict detection, and a review summary before anything is applied
• Wireless management — SSID create/edit/enable/disable/delete, bulk SSID deployment across APs, WPA2/WPA3 security profiles, and support for both the RouterOS 7 wifi package and the legacy wlan package
• RF Health — channel usage across 2.4/5/6 GHz with co-channel overlap highlighting, AP deployment density plotted against RSSI, TX-retry histograms, and a connectivity funnel (association → authentication → DHCP) derived from device logs
• Spectral and AP scans — scheduled or on demand, per radio
• Rogue & neighbour AP detection — stored scan results cross-referenced against your own SSIDs and radio MACs; a foreign BSSID broadcasting your SSID is flagged as an evil twin
• Device fingerprinting — every client classified into a category (server, computer, phone, TV, camera, printer, console, IoT…) from OUI and hostname, overridable per client and persistent across polls
• CAPsMAN — role detection (standalone / CAP / controller / controller-with-local-radios), provisioned interfaces labelled with their controller, and a controller panel grouping every AP with its radios, live channel, provisioned SSID and client counts. CAPs are matched to managed devices by radio MAC — hardware identity, so it cannot confuse two devices on two segments. Read-only for now; see CAPsMAN scope
• Guest WiFi — a guided wizard that builds a full captive portal in one pass: guest SSID on every radio, VLAN segregation, IP pool, DHCP, hotspot profile, bandwidth-limited user profile and optional NAT. Plus batch vouchers with printable 3-up sheets, a live guests-online table, and an inline walled garden

Firewall and network services

A Meraki/UniFi-grade firewall experience on the full RouterOS feature set.

• Security Center — fleet-wide hardening scores, per-device posture, and a "Common Findings" rollup aggregating identical issues across every device
• Friendly rule builder — action chips, address and address-list pickers, well-known port presets, connection-state chips, per-rule logging, and a plain-English preview of every rule
• Address lists as reusable objects — define LAN, Trusted, Blocklist once and reference them anywhere
• Rule reordering — order is decisive in RouterOS; move rules with one click
• Hit counters — per-rule packet and byte counts surface which rules match and flag dead ones
• NAT wizards — guided Port Forward, Masquerade and 1:1 NAT flows, plus a Custom mode
• Security posture audit — per-device hardening checklist with a score and one-click remediation
• Bandwidth control — simple queues per IP, subnet or interface, with a one-click "limit this client"
• Active connections — live connection-tracking table with search

Each network service supports multi-device management with conflict detection:

Service	Capabilities
DHCP	IPv4 & IPv6 servers, address pools, static leases, live lease table
DNS	Upstream servers, static records (A/AAAA/CNAME/MX/NS/PTR/TXT/SRV), cache flush, DoH
NTP	Server (broadcast/manycast), client (unicast/multicast), sync status
WireGuard	Interface management, peer configuration, public keys, RX/TX stats
Logging	Syslog actions and routing rules, single-device or push-to-all with per-entry coverage
NetFlow	One-toggle Traffic Flow export per device, pointed at the built-in collector
Discovery & SNMP	Fleet-wide LLDP toggle and SNMP v1/v2c/v3, scoped to all devices, routers, or switches

Visibility and troubleshooting

• Network topology — auto-discovered from LLDP, CDP and MNDP, with LLDP treated as ground truth and lower-priority protocols suppressed for the same neighbour. Bidirectional pairs merge into one edge with both port names. Neighbours are resolved to managed devices by MAC before IP, because a MAC is unique fleet-wide and an address is not
• Manual links — drag between any two devices to record a connection discovery cannot see; stored persistently and drawn as purple dashed edges
• Orphan detection — devices with no known connections are grouped with a prompt to link them
• Traffic analytics — a built-in NetFlow v9/IPFIX collector on UDP 2055, per-client attribution, application breakdown (HTTPS, QUIC, DNS, SSH, email, WireGuard…), top talkers over 1h → 30d, automatic deduplication when a flow crosses two managed routers, and NAT-tolerant ingest for routers exporting from behind NAT or a VPN subnet router
• Configuration history — snapshots of each device's full /export, deduplicated by content hash so only real changes are stored, with side-by-side line diffs, a change summary, and one-click rollback through the proven restore path
• Audit log — every authenticated write recorded with user, timestamp, method, path, entity, IP and response status
• Global search — devices, clients and events from the top bar
• Per-device tools:

Tool	Description
Ping	ICMP reachability with RTT and loss
Traceroute	Hop-by-hop path trace
IP Scan	ARP sweep of a subnet to find live hosts
Wake-on-LAN	Magic packet sent from the MikroTik device
Packet Capture	RouterOS sniffer for 5–60s, downloaded as a .pcap for Wireshark (requires SSH)
Bandwidth Test	Throughput between two devices; the target's test server is enabled and disabled automatically

Fleet operations

• Firmware orchestration — fleet version overview, live update checks, and MikroTik's official release notes in-app. Staged rollouts run in waves (wave 1 = canary) through a verified pipeline per device: pre-upgrade backup → install → ride out the reboot → confirm it returned healthy on the new version → next. Halt on failure stops the rollout if any device fails, and a device that comes back on the old version counts as a failure. Rollouts can be scheduled, and cancelling never interrupts an in-flight flash
• Backups — on demand or on a daily/weekly/monthly schedule for all online devices, downloadable from the UI. Config snapshots and their restorable .rsc are one artifact: delete either and both go, so they never drift apart
• Configuration templates — reusable sets (DNS, NTP, syslog) pushed to many devices with per-device result reporting
• Bulk device add — "Try All" on discovered devices runs as a server-side job that survives a closed browser tab, with live progress and cancel
• Device organisation — colour-coded tags, rack location, physical address with map support, and per-device notes

Access control and platform

• Roles — Admin, Operator (read/write), Viewer (read-only)
• Two-factor authentication — per-user TOTP via QR code, required at login once enabled
• Single sign-on (OIDC) — any standards-compliant provider (Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace, Keycloak, Authentik…), with group-to-role mapping, auto-provisioning, and local login retained as break-glass. Configured entirely in the UI — see Single sign-on setup
• Scoped API tokens — mtm_… tokens with read or write scope and optional expiry, shown once and stored only as a SHA-256 hash. No token can perform admin actions or manage other tokens
• Outbound webhooks — subscribe to any of twelve events, delivered as HMAC-SHA256-signed JSON POSTs through the same pipeline that respects alert rules, cooldowns and maintenance windows
• Scheduled email reports — daily, weekly or monthly HTML fleet summaries to any recipient list
• Credential presets — shared device credentials, optionally restricted to admins only
• Encryption at rest — device passwords encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a self-healing key
• TLS — self-signed certificate generated on first run, replaceable via the Settings UI; nginx terminates TLS and redirects HTTP

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Reference

Environment variables

Set in .env. Both secrets auto-generate on first boot if you leave them unset.

Variable	Default	Description
JWT_SECRET	auto-generated & persisted	Signs session tokens. Set it to pin your own value.
ENCRYPTION_KEY	auto-generated & persisted	Encrypts device passwords at rest. Set it to pin your own value.
CORS_ORIGIN	localhost defaults	Comma-separated browser origins allowed to call the API. Required in production.
DB_PASSWORD	mikrotik_secure_pw	PostgreSQL password
INFLUXDB_TOKEN	mytoken123456789	InfluxDB admin token
INFLUXDB_ORG	mikrotik-manager	InfluxDB organization
INFLUXDB_BUCKET	metrics	InfluxDB bucket for time-series data
INFLUXDB_ADMIN_PASSWORD	admin_password_123	InfluxDB admin UI password
HTTP_PORT	80	Host port for HTTP (redirects to HTTPS)
HTTPS_PORT	443	Host port for HTTPS

Never commit .env. It is already in .gitignore.

Change Guard and Config Health settings

These live in the Settings UI rather than .env, so they apply without a restart.

Setting	Default	Description
change_guard_enabled	true	Master switch. When off, guarded changes still apply — with no safety net and no lockout refusal.
change_guard_mode	binary	binary = /system backup restore; recovers deletions exactly, reboots the device. script = /export + /import; no reboot, but additive, so it cannot undo a deletion.
change_guard_timeout_sec	120	How long the device waits before rescuing itself. Must exceed the manager's verification window (~40s) with margin for a slow device.
config_health_enabled	true	Runs the standing configuration audit.
config_health_interval_min	60	Audit cadence per device — one read-only snapshot over the API.

Overriding a predicted lockout is deliberate by design: the API requires confirm_lockout: true and the UI requires typing the device name. The change then runs under Change Guard regardless, so an override is a decision to rely on auto-revert — not to bypass protection.

CAPsMAN scope

Provisioning, configuration edits and interface enable/disable are deliberately not exposed. A CAPsMAN configuration applies to every access point bound to it simultaneously, which is the fleet-wide version of the failure Change Guard exists to prevent. Those operations are held back until they carry the same prediction-and-revert protection that per-device changes do.

Legacy /caps-man (the pre-RouterOS 7 controller) is a separate API tree and is not covered yet.

Secret management (self-healing)

JWT_SECRET and ENCRYPTION_KEY are managed automatically:

• Set to a strong value in the environment — that value is used, and you stay in control.
• Unset or left at an old default — the backend generates a strong secret once, persists it to the app_data volume (SECRETS_DIR, default /app/data), and reuses it every boot. Secrets live outside the database, so a database dump alone cannot reveal the key protecting the credentials inside it.

Upgrades are non-breaking. Existing ciphertext is decrypted via a legacy-key fallback (including previous defaults) and transparently re-encrypted under the current key by a background sweep. Rotating the JWT secret off a public default invalidates sessions signed with it — users simply log in again.

Key rotation: set a new ENCRYPTION_KEY (or delete the persisted secret to force regeneration) and restart. Old rows keep decrypting via the fallback and are re-encrypted forward automatically. If the persisted secret and every prior key are lost, ciphertext under that key cannot be recovered — re-enter device credentials or restore a backup.

Single sign-on (OIDC)

Authorization Code flow with PKCE. The server validates the ID token (JWKS signature plus iss, aud, exp, nonce) and then issues the platform's normal session, so SSO users get the same experience as local ones. No environment variables or redeploy — everything is configured in the UI, with the client secret encrypted at rest.

1. Register the app with your provider. Create an OIDC web application and note its Issuer URL (the base serving /.well-known/openid-configuration), Client ID and Client Secret — public clients with no secret work too, via PKCE. Use this redirect URI:

https://<your-host>/api/auth/oidc/callback

2. Configure it under Settings → SSO / OIDC.

Field	Purpose
Issuer URL	Your provider's base URL; Test discovery verifies reachability.
Client ID / Secret	From step 1. The secret is write-only; leave blank to keep the existing one.
Scopes	Default openid profile email. Add a groups scope if your IdP needs one.
Username / Email / Groups claim	Defaults preferred_username, email, groups.
Group → role mapping	Map IdP groups to admin / operator / viewer. Highest-privilege match wins.
Default role	For users matching no mapping (default viewer).
Auto-provision	Create a local user on first sign-in.
Link by verified email	Attach an SSO identity to an existing account when email_verified matches.
Allowed email domains	Optional allowlist.
Button label	Text on the login button, e.g. "Sign in with Okta".

Behaviour and safety:

• Provisioning — first sign-in creates a user, or links to an existing local account when the verified email matches. SSO users have no local password.
• Roles are always resolved server-side from your mapping, and existing users are never silently demoted when a login carries no matching group.
• Break-glass — local login stays available, so the seeded admin can always get in even if the IdP is misconfigured or unreachable.
• Behind a proxy — the redirect URI derives from the request host; set Public base URL to pin it when your external URL differs from what the backend sees.

Tech stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 18, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS
State / data	TanStack Query v5, React Router v6, Zustand
Charts / topology / maps	Recharts, @xyflow/react, Leaflet
Terminal	xterm.js
Backend	Node.js, Express, TypeScript
Primary DB	PostgreSQL 15
Time-series DB	InfluxDB 2.7
Cache / queue	Redis 7, BullMQ
Real-time	Socket.IO
Device comms	RouterOS API (8728 / 8729), SSH2
Proxy	nginx — TLS termination and static serving
Container	Docker Compose

Project structure

mikrotik-manager/
├── frontend/               # React + TypeScript (Vite)
│   └── src/
│       ├── pages/          # One component per route
│       ├── components/     # Shared UI
│       ├── services/       # API client (Axios)
│       ├── hooks/          # Custom React hooks
│       └── types/          # TypeScript definitions
│
├── backend/                # Node.js + Express + TypeScript
│   └── src/
│       ├── routes/         # REST API handlers
│       ├── services/       # Polling, alerts, backups, orchestration
│       │   ├── mikrotik/   # RouterOS API client and device collector
│       │   ├── changeGuard/# Auto-revert, lockout prediction, Config Health
│       │   └── topology/   # Neighbour graph construction
│       ├── db/             # Schema and migrations
│       ├── config/         # Database, InfluxDB, Redis connections
│       ├── middleware/     # Auth, audit logging, error handling
│       └── utils/          # Crypto, OUI lookup, VLAN parsing
│
├── nginx/                  # Reverse proxy config and Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml      # Build from source
├── docker-compose.ghcr.yml # Pre-built images
└── .env.example

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue before submitting a pull request so we can discuss the approach — several recent features started as exactly that conversation.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a branch: git checkout -b feature/your-feature
3. Commit your changes
4. Push and open a pull request

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License

Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 — see LICENSE for the full text.

• You are free to use, modify and distribute this software.
• If you run a modified version as a network service, you must make your modified source available to users of that service under the same license.
• Distributed copies and derivatives must also carry AGPLv3.

This license keeps improvements — including those deployed as a service — open and available.

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AI assistance

This project was designed and built with the help of Claude by Anthropic. AI assistance was used throughout: architecture, backend services, frontend components, the CI/CD pipeline, security configuration and unit tests.

We believe in being transparent about how software is made. The code is reviewed and tested with AI assistance and maintained by the project authors.

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Disclaimer

Not affiliated with or endorsed by MikroTik. MikroTik and RouterOS are trademarks of SIA MikroTīkls. Use at your own risk, and always test configuration changes outside production first.