How does it work?
You enter the dojo as a white belt meatball. Every week, you receive one question about your belt by email: open it, answer on the site, and immediately find out if you were right, with the explanation and the article to dig deeper.
The questions follow the official MikroTik course curricula: from RouterOS basics for the white belt to BGP, MPLS, IPv6, and scripting for the black belt. They are written for people who have actually done the work, not for those who are just guessing.
How do you earn a higher belt?
Consecutive correct answers are required: 5 to pass to yellow belt, then 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 to reach the black belt. One mistake resets the streak to zero: in the dojo, you go back to training. However, you do not lose the belt you have earned.
Each question remains open until the next one arrives: if you don't answer in time, it's not an error and the streak stays as it is, but that week is lost for promotion.
Do you already have a MikroTik certification?
So you have already covered part of the road. Enter your official certificate number in your area: I will check it against the public MikroTik registry, and if it is valid and issued to you, for the ranks it covers you only need half of the required consecutive correct answers. With the MTCNA, for example, for the yellow belt you only need 3 instead of 5.
| Step | Certification that shortens it | Correct in a row |
|---|---|---|
| From white to yellow | MTCNA | |
| From yellow to orange | MTCNA | |
| From orange to green | MTCNA | |
| From green to blue | MTCRE | |
| From blue to brown | MTCSWEorMTCWEorMTCUMEorMTCEWE | |
| From brown to black | MTCTCEorMTCSE | |
| From black to I dan | MTCINEorMTCIPv6E |
Only the certification valid at the time of promotion counts: I recheck the registry every week, and if one expires, the bonus stops until you add the renewal number (belts already earned remain yours). Valid certifications also appear on your badge, as gold tags.
From white to black belt: one question a week, and the polpette grows with you.
And after the black belt?
It continues: with 20 correct in a row on black belt questions, you earn the I dan, then 25 for II, 30, 35 and 40 for the V dan. Here too, one mistake resets the streak, never the rank. How the dan belts are made is known only to those who reach them.
Whoever achieves V dan becomes a MikroTik Master and enters the Kraken Council: the path is over, the questions stop coming, and that place is theirs forever.
What matters?
The dojo keeps track of all your answers, both correct and incorrect, and your percentage of correct answers in your current belt (or dan), which resets to zero with each promotion. At each promotion, the sensei writes a brief portrait of you as a student, based on your statistics.
The hall of fame
Those in the dojo see the hall of fame: the top five of each belt. You move up if you have the highest percentage of correct answers since you got that belt; if the percentage is the same, the one who has had it longer moves up. Among black belts, dan rank comes first, and the Masters of the Kraken Council are at the top. You only appear if you choose to, with the dojo name you prefer.
The badge and the verification
With each promotion you receive your badge for your website, email signature and social media. If you choose to be verifiable, anyone can check your rank by entering your student number in Verify a student, and the badge you pasted updates itself when you advance.
Why an octopus?
Because those who do our job would need eight arms, and MikroTik routers do ten things at once. The octopus has eight arms that each work independently and three hearts: the redundancy we would want in every network.