Beginner Basics • Two CCR2116-12G-4S+ Won’t Respond to Winbox or DHCP — Normal Behavior?

I bought two MikroTik CCR2116-12G-4S+ units from Amazon (shipped new, sealed, and fulfilled by MikroTik). I expected to be able to plug in a Windows computer and configure them easily, but I’m stuck — neither router seems to respond at all.

I've tried with two different Windows machines, different cables, and different ports — both routers behave identically.

1) Winbox (v4.0 beta 18):

I connected directly via Ethernet to port ether1. Most of the time, no neighbors appear. Occasionally I see:

MAC Address: F4:1E:57:5A:57:7E
IP: 0.0.0.0
Identity: MikroTik
Version: 7.15.2
Board: CCR2116-12G-4S+

But when I try to connect via MAC, I get: "ERR: Could not connect. MacConnection syn timeout."

2) IP Configuration:

When connected directly to either router, both Windows machines get a 169.254.x.x APIPA address in ipconfig, which ChatGPT says suggests means there is no DHCP server is running on the router and no IP address is being assigned

Windows Computer 1:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.32.55
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Windows Computer 2:

Link-Local IPv6 Address : fe80::cebr:b86e:8432:656b%19
Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.206.143
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

3) Static IP Attempt:

I manually set one Windows computer to:

IP: 192.168.88.10
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.88.1

Then tried to ping 192.168.88.1 from it while connected to the router, but I got: Reply from 192.168.88.10: Destination host unreachable.

I see the quick start guide suggests you do this as well, but with 192.168.88.2, so I tried that also with mask 255.255.255.0 but that also can't ping 192.168.88.1 or load it in browser.

Questions:

• Is this normal behavior out of the box for CCR2116 units?
• Do these routers come completely blank with no IP/DHCP/default config?
• Is there something else I should try to access them (e.g. serial console - would need a cord)?
• Should I expect to need Netinstall just to configure them the first time?

The lights are flashing, the fans spin, and the devices do appear alive, but I can't seem to connect to either of them at all.

I’m not a networking expert, so apologies if I’ve missed something obvious. I tried getting advice from ChatGPT and Grok but neither could figure it out either. Any help would be much appreciated!

Statistics: Posted by jonjm — Mon Apr 07, 2025 9:44 am

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