Troubleshooting devices
A step-by-step checklist when a router shows as offline, the connection test fails, panel tools cannot reach the router or guests cannot be disconnected.
The panel reaches your router through the VPN tunnel: the RouterOS API (management tools, login page setup), RADIUS (guest login and 5651 accounting records) and RADIUS Disconnect (dropping guests) all go through it. Most problems come from a broken tunnel, a wrong clock or a changed Hotspotly user on the router.
Read the status
On the My Devices list every device shows Online, Offline or Pending Setup.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending Setup | The setup script was not run or the VPN key did not arrive. Go back to the wizard with Continue Setup. |
| Offline | The last connection test could not reach the router. |
| Online | The last connection test succeeded. |
Last Seen on the device detail page is the last time the panel received evidence from the router (a connection test or a RADIUS accounting record from the router). The panel does not connect to routers on a schedule; press Test Connection to refresh the status.
Checklist
- Is the router on and online? Open the router with Winbox or from the local network; check
that
/ping 1.1.1.1answers. - Is the clock right?
/system clock print. If the clock is off by more than a few minutes, certificate and IPsec checks fail. Turn on the NTP client: on v7/system ntp client set enabled=yesand/system ntp client servers add address=pool.ntp.org; on v6/system ntp client set enabled=yes primary-ntp=<NTP server IP>. - Is the tunnel up? v7 (WireGuard): in
/interface wireguard peers printthelast-handshakemust be less than 2 minutes old. v6 (L2TP/IPsec):/interface l2tp-client printmust show the connection asR(running). - Is the tunnel IP right?
/ip address printmust contain the Tunnel IP shown on the device detail page. - Does the Hotspotly API user still exist?
/user printmust list the user added by the setup script, allowed to log in only from the server's tunnel address. If it was deleted or its password changed, run the script again. - Press Test Connection in the panel. If it fails, continue with VPN connection test.
Panel tools show a "connection error"
Screens such as resource monitoring, interfaces and DHCP connect to the RouterOS API (inside the tunnel). If the tunnel is up but the tools fail:
- Check in
/ip service printthat theapi(orapi-ssl) service is enabled and itsaddressfield covers the server's tunnel address. - Check that no firewall rule drops connections arriving on the tunnel interface.
Guest login does not work
If the router says "RADIUS server is not responding" or guests cannot connect with correct details, see RADIUS not responding. The most common causes are a RADIUS client whose source address is not the tunnel IP, or a device RADIUS secret changed by hand. Re-applying the setup script fixes both.
Guests cannot be disconnected
When an account is deleted, its time ends or a check-out arrives, the system sends a RADIUS Disconnect (UDP 3799). If the router does not answer, the API fallback is used directly for 20 minutes.
/radius incoming printmust showaccept=yes(the setup script enables it).- A router set up with an old script may lack this setting; run the script again.
- If the API cannot be reached either, the guest session ends when its own time runs out.
Clean reinstall
If none of the above helps, generate the device's setup script again and run it. Details: RouterOS 7 · RouterOS 6.49.
Administrator view
The platform administrator sees every customer's devices on the My Devices page, with the Customer filter, Connection Type and status; Continue Setup is available for devices waiting for setup. A last-seen summary of all devices is on the Server status page.