Forum Discussion

Tutor

Jul 13, 2016

Solved

MAC Address Restriction and Ensemble Management

I'm looking for a new set of AP's and was reading up on the WAC720 and WAC730. With regards to the MAC Authentication feature, is there a limit on the number of MAC addresses that can be added? ...

Installation

Security

cjaques
Jul 26, 2016
I have a pair of WAC720s in Ensemble (Firmware 3.5.12.0) and I just checked out the settings for the MAC Authentication. In my testing I found that the MAC Authentication list is shared between Ensemble members. As far as the number of MAC Addresses that you can add I'm not sure but there is a feature to import from a file so I think that you can have a large list. Otherwise you can setup the MAC Authentication to work with a RADIUS server. It should be noted that MAC Authentications are per band(2,4GHz and 5GHz) and not per SSID.

MAC Authentication can be found via the web interface at Configuration>Security>Advanced>MAC Authentication

JohnRo

NETGEAR Employee Retired

Jul 18, 2016

Hello bhata,

Welcome to the community!

I have not seen any documentation about the limit on the MAC authentication. I believe the limit will be the same as the total number of users the AP can support. I am not sure yet but definitely, can be inquired to our engineering team. For your second question regarding ensemble, the answer is yes. For now, it can only support the same model per cluster.

Thanks,

bhata
Tutor
Jul 18, 2016
Hi JohnRo,

Thanks for the info...

Do you know if the list of restricted MAC addresses is propagated in a cluster? Or would one need to configure each individual AP?

It's unfortunate that the Ensemble Management feature doesn't allow multiple models per cluster. I'm a bit surprised since the configuration seems to be the same.

-bhata
- JohnRo
  NETGEAR Employee Retired
  Jul 18, 2016
  Hi bhata,
  
  You'll need to set up the MAC authentication on each AP. Ensemble is mostly for managing and monitoring the wireless AP. In fact, I do not see any setting for MAC authentication on the ensemble web-interface. I'm hopeful that it will be addressed in future firmware updates. Ensemble management is pretty new so there could be more to it on the future.
  
  Thanks,
  - bhata
    Tutor
    Jul 18, 2016
    Thanks again JohnRo... It'll probably be a few months before I actually upgrade so perhaps some new firmware to expand capabilities will occur in the near future...