Router Health, Diagnostics & Maintenance

Diagnose router performance with live telemetry, CPU and memory metrics, targeted recovery actions, maintenance mode, and scheduled reboots.

Reading router telemetry signals together

Diagnosing an issue on an edge router requires interpreting multiple operational signals together rather than relying on a single indicator. In your Nukta dashboard, navigate to Devices → Mikrotiks to review live telemetry:

Signal	What it indicates	What it does not prove alone
Online / Reachability	The router's WireGuard management tunnel is active and responding to heartbeats.	That local access points or LAN bridge ports are functioning correctly.
Active Customer Sessions	Paying customers are actively authenticated and passing traffic through RADIUS.	That all sessions have healthy speeds or that upstream backhaul is uncongested.
CPU, Memory & Disk Metrics	Hardware resource utilization and hardware headroom on the router board.	The underlying cause of a specific customer payment or captive login failure.
Live Bandwidth & Traffic	Aggregate throughput and top consumer traffic distribution streaming live.	That package rate-limit policies are configured correctly without customer context.
Daily Collections	Financial transactions collected at this router's hotspot or PPPoE sites.	Upstream bank settlement or mobile money account reconciliation.

The router detail workspace

Clicking on any router in Devices → Mikrotiks opens the comprehensive Router Details view, organized into five focused tabs:

1. Information

Hardware Health Score: An aggregated health percentage reflecting uptime, resource capacity, and packet stability.
System Resource Gauges: Real-time meters for CPU Usage, RAM Utilization, and Disk Capacity.
General Information: Hardware board model (e.g., RB750Gr3), RouterOS firmware version, assigned WireGuard tunnel IP, and system uptime.
Direct Remote Access: Direct one-click links to launch WinBox or WebFig sessions securely through the encrypted tunnel without needing a public IP address.

2. Reports

Real-Time Bandwidth Graphs: Streaming upload and download speeds passing through the router.
Historical Traffic Analytics: Daily and weekly megabyte/gigabyte consumption patterns.
System Load Trends: Historical CPU and memory trends helping you detect peak-hour saturation.

3. Customers

Connected Sessions: A live list of all Hotspot and PPPoE customers currently routing through this device.
Direct Session Actions: Instant shortcut buttons to view customer profiles, inspect leased IPs, or kick hung sessions.

4. Events

Immutable Audit Trail: Chronological log of router actions, including reboots, walled garden updates, config changes, and team member actions.

5. Payments

Local Revenue Ledger: Transactions collected specifically from customers connected to this router, helping assess site-by-site profitability in your selected currency.

Targeted diagnostic and recovery actions

From the action menu on any router card or details page, your team can execute targeted operational tasks:

1. Sync Walled Garden

What it does: Pushes the latest payment gateway hostnames, mobile money APIs, and captive portal domains into your router's walled garden table (/ip hotspot walled-garden).
When to use: Whenever walk-in hotspot users report that checkout screens fail to load or payment confirmation callbacks do not open.

2. Sync Router Time

What it does: Corrects router clock drift by synchronizing RouterOS with standard network time.
When to use: When a router has rebooted without an internet uplink and shows an incorrect year (e.g., 1970). Accurate router time is essential for SSL handshakes, scheduled tasks, and RADIUS accounting timestamps.

3. Redownload Hotspot Files

What it does: Re-downloads and installs fresh branded captive portal HTML and CSS templates onto your router's flash storage.
When to use: When you have updated your company logo or portal theme in Customer Portals → Captive Portal and want the changes applied immediately to local offline assets.

4. Check Status

What it does: Sends an immediate telemetry query over the management tunnel to verify tunnel latency, RouterOS version, and system metrics.

5. Reboot MikroTik

What it does: Sends a graceful restart command over the secure management tunnel (/system reboot).
When to use: To clear memory fragmentation or restart frozen backhaul interfaces during approved maintenance windows.

Router maintenance mode

When upgrading hardware, splicing fiber cables, or working on access point towers, you can put a router into Maintenance Mode:

Normal Mode:       Hotspot Wi-Fi ----> Branded Captive Portal ----> Package Purchase & Payments
Maintenance Mode:  Hotspot Wi-Fi ----> Maintenance Screen    ----> Purchases Paused

What happens during maintenance mode?

Already Connected Customers: Remain online! Maintenance mode does not disconnect existing Hotspot or PPPoE sessions.
PPPoE Customers: Continue connecting as normal because PPPoE authentication bypasses the captive portal.
New Walk-in Hotspot Customers: See a clean "Network Maintenance" screen displaying your custom message, expected completion time, and support contact number. Package purchase buttons are hidden, preventing customers from paying for service during site downtime.
Allow Existing Customers to Log In: An optional toggle that displays login options (username/password or voucher PIN) while keeping new payments blocked.

Turning maintenance mode on and off

In your dashboard, open Devices → Mikrotiks and select your router.
In the action menu, choose Enable Maintenance Mode.
Fill in the optional fields:
- Maintenance Message: Custom announcement (e.g., "Upgrading fiber optic link to provide faster speeds").
- Back Online By: The estimated completion time. When this timestamp passes, Nukta automatically turns off maintenance mode and restores normal package purchasing.
Click Enable. The router displays an amber Maintenance badge in your dashboard.
To restore normal operation manually, click Disable Maintenance Mode at any time.

Scheduled reboots and multi-WAN failover

Scheduling automated reboots

Rebooting routers during peak business hours disrupts paying customers. Instead, schedule reboots during your lowest-traffic window (such as 03:00 AM) using RouterOS's built-in scheduler:

Open your router in WinBox.
Go to System → Scheduler.
Click + Add.
Name: nightly-reboot.
Start Time: 03:00:00.
Interval: 1d (or 7d for weekly reboots).
On Event: /system reboot.
Click Apply and OK.

TIP

Before scheduling reboots, ensure your router's system clock is synchronized via Sync Router Time so scheduled tasks fire at the correct local hour.

Multi-WAN failover guidelines

Nukta manages the customer access side of your MikroTik (RADIUS, Hotspot, and PPPoE). For ISPs utilizing dual internet connections (e.g., primary fiber with a backup 4G/wireless link), configure multi-WAN failover directly in RouterOS:

Assign each WAN interface a default route with different distance values (e.g., Primary Fiber = Distance 1, Backup Link = Distance 2).
Enable Check Gateway (check-gateway=ping) on the primary route so traffic automatically fails over to the backup link if the primary gateway stops responding.
Nukta's WireGuard management tunnel will automatically re-establish over the backup connection within seconds.

Safe router removal workflow

Deleting a router removes its configuration records and management tunnel from your workspace. Because deletion is permanent, follow these safety steps before removing a device:

Verify Active Sessions: Open Users → Active Users and confirm no customers are currently routing through the device.
Reassign or Disable Customers: Move any fixed PPPoE customers bound to this router to another site.
Review Packages: Ensure no active internet packages in Finance → Packages have strict NAS restrictions binding them solely to this router.
Delete Router: In Devices → Mikrotiks, open the router action menu and select Delete Router. Confirm the prompt to cleanly remove the device.