Choosing names

Names are the cheapest documentation you own. They show up in WinBox, in log lines, in the DHCP list and on the handover sheet, and they are read by somebody who was not there when you built it. A good name says what a device does, not where it happens to hang or whose it happens to be.

How the tool names devices

In a site every device gets a name that follows its role: gw for anything that routes, sw for a switch and ap for an access point, with a two digit number. So you get gw-01, sw-01, ap-01, ap-02.

• Numbering runs per role, not per site. One continuous sequence would give gw-01 and then ap-02, which looks like a device is missing.
• The name follows the role, not the box. A hEX S used as a switch is sw-01, not gw-02.
• Change a device's role and a name the tool gave follows along. A name you typed stays as it is, even when it no longer matches the role.
• Delete ap-01 and add one, and you get ap-01 back rather than a second ap-02.

That name becomes the device identity, which is what WinBox shows in its title bar. It has to be unique: two devices with the same name is an error in the site checks, and CAPsMAN recognises its access points by it too. A name may hold letters, digits, dots, hyphens and underscores; anything else is replaced with a hyphen, and it is cut off after sixty characters.

Names that last a year

The question is not whether a name is clear today, but whether it is still true in a year. That rules out everything that changes while the device stays put.

• No place in the name. sw-comms-cupboard and ap-meeting-room read well until the refit. What is in the cupboard moves, the switch stays.
• No customer name on a device that gets reused. A router that comes back as jones-gw from a cancelled contract and goes into the next customer's rack is wrong for a year.
• No model in the name. hex-01 is untrue the moment an RB5009 takes its place. The model is on the handover sheet already.
• No address or VLAN number in the name. Those are exactly the things you want to be able to change.

What does last is role plus number, with a short site code in front if you look after several buildings: ams-sw-01, rtm-gw-01. A building rarely moves, a meeting room does.

Port comments

A port comment answers the question of where that cable goes without anybody pulling on it. If you draw the cabling on the network board, the tool writes the comment for you: to sw-01 ether1 for a cable to another device, internet for the uplink, and for a drawn PC, server or camera the name of that block. If you already typed a comment on that port, yours is kept.

When there is more to say than where the cable goes, use the port comments list in the ports and bridge part. Keep them short and factual: to sw-01 ether1 (trunk) or till 2. You see them back with /interface ethernet print and in the port table on the handover sheet. Ports you have switched off get the comment unused, and an offbridge port is marked as emergency access, so the next person does not have to work out why that one port is different.

SSID names

An SSID is the one name from your plan that can be read outside the building. Keep it short, without punctuation, and without anything you would rather not broadcast. A few practical points:

• 32 characters at most, and every SSID in the list has to be unique.
• The name is also used to build the RouterOS objects that belong to it, such as the security and configuration profiles. Punctuation and emoji turn into hyphens there, so a calm name reads far better later on.
• Keep the band out of the name. Fixing Office-5G means you cannot merge the bands under one name later, which is exactly what roaming wants.
• For roaming the name, security and passphrase have to match on every access point. That is why the SSIDs sit in the site's shared settings; if the access points do not all broadcast the same set, the tool says so.

The first SSID you find is a default name with four random digits after it, and the second row starts as Guest with isolation on. Both are there to be overwritten. See Wi-Fi settings for the rest of the fields and documenting and handing over for where the names end up.