How to configure a PPTP VPN Server on Mikrotik RouterOS

Intro

Before I started to write this post, I thought that it would be nice to say some word about PPTP VPN and Mikrotik RouterOS, but then I realized that if you are reading this, there is no need to explain what is PPTP VPN server or Mikrotik RouterOS.
Here is a simple step by step tutorial with images and all information that you need to get a fully working PPTP VPN server…

Step 1: create VPN pool

IP pools are used to define range of IP addresses that will be used for your PPTP VPN server

[admin@MikroTik] > /ip pool print
 NAME      RANGES
 VPN-pool  192.168.1.101-192.168.1.110

Step 2: create a VPN user

In this step you will create a user that can connect to your VPN Server. In this example only one user is created, but you can add as many user as you need…

[admin@MikroTik] > /ppp secret print
 # NAME SERVICE CALLER-ID PASSWORD PROFILE     REMOTE-ADDRESS
 0 ppp1 pptp    ppp1      ****     VPN-profile

Step 3: create a VPN profile

From wiki.mikrotik.com

PPP profiles are used to define default values for user access records stored under /ppp secret submenu. Settings in /ppp secret User Database override corresponding /ppp profile settings except that single IP addresses always take precedence over IP pools when specified as local-address or remote-address parameters.

[admin@MikroTik] > /ppp profile print
 1    name="VPN-profile" local-address=192.168.1.1 remote-address=VPN-pool bridge=br1 use-mpls=default
      use-compression=default use-vj-compression=default use-encryption=yes only-one=default
      change-tcp-mss=yes address-list="" dns-server=8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4

Step 4: Create PPTP Server Binding (Optional)

This step is optional, because your VPN server will work even if you skip this.
In this step you bind user ppp1 to interface pptp-in1. This is very useful if you need to create firewall rules for a specific user.

Step 5: Enable VPN Server

In this step we just need to enable our PPTP server and set default profile…

[admin@MikroTik] > /interface pptp-server server print
           enabled: yes
           max-mtu: 1450
           max-mru: 1450
              mrru: 1600
    authentication: mschap1,mschap2
 keepalive-timeout: 30
   default-profile: VPN-profile

Step 6: Configure bridge (Optional)

Like step 4, even this step is optional. This step is the main reason that I’m writing this tutorial, so it deserves a few word :)
If you skip this step, you will be able to connect to your VPN server, you will have the same public IP as your VPN server, but you will not see any other devices connected on this subnet. If this is OK for you, you don’t need to do anything else.
If you want to see other devices in your subnet, you must change ARP mode for your Bridge. For more details about ARP modes go to mikrotik documentation

[admin@MikroTik] > /interface bridge print
Flags: X - disabled, R - running
  0    R name="br1" mtu=1500 l2mtu=1598 arp=proxy-arp mac-address=4C:5E:0C:21:A4:85 protocol-mode=rstp
         priority=0x8000 auto-mac=no admin-mac=4C:5E:0C:21:A4:85 max-message-age=20s forward-delay=15s
         transmit-hold-count=6 ageing-time=5m

Step 7: Finish

If you did all right, you now have a working PPTP VPN server.
Important: Don’t forget to open port 1723 (tcp) in your firewall settings:

/ip firewall filter add chain=input comment="PPTP VPN" dst-port=1723 protocol