Problem statement

At first glance, it looks safe to use the loopback address 127.0.0.1 for MikroTik watchdog ping. The assumption is simple: the router can always ping itself, so it should never trigger a reboot.

I just couldn’t find in the documentation how to disable this ping correctly ( if configured once ), and I think, why not use 127.0.0.1 … after all, it’s always available for pinging.

[user@mikrotik] /system/watchdog> /system/watchdog/print
          watch-address: 127.0.0.1
         watchdog-timer: no
  ping-start-after-boot: 5m
           ping-timeout: 5m
       automatic-supout: no
       auto-send-supout: no

However, this is not the case in MikroTik and you will see unexpected watchdog reboots with logs like:

[user@mikrotik] /system/watchdog> /log/print
 2025-10-03 13:08:55 system,error,critical router was rebooted without proper shutdown by watchdog timer
 2025-10-03 13:08:55 interface,info lo link up

x

Solution: Using Watchdog with 0.0.0.0

[user@mikrotik] > /system/watchdog/set watch-address=0.0.0.0

[user@mikrotik] > /system/watchdog/print
          watch-address: none
         watchdog-timer: no
  ping-start-after-boot: 5m
           ping-timeout: 5m
       automatic-supout: no
       auto-send-supout: no

Does not work

  • unset - not available here
  • reset - not available here
  • watch-address="" also does not work

Version

[user@mikrotik] > system/resource/print
                  version: 7.20 (stable)
               build-time: 2025-09-29 09:33:57
        architecture-name: arm
               board-name: wAP R ac
                 platform: MikroTik