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Forum Discussion
EX7000 Virtual MAC Address problems
I want to disable the EX7000's allocation of virtual MAC addresses to devices on my network but I cannot find anywhere how do do this. I am coming to the conclusion that it is not possible. The vir...
Netgear really needs to provide a way to turn Virtual MAC Address feature off. It creates problems on the network. When I move from one extender to the router, my device often fails to acquire an IP address due to the change of MAC. I wonder why Netgear needs to use Virtual MACs. Isn't MAC unique for a device?
It turns off in AP mode (which you can't use). So yes, if you are trying to make this setup roam, you need to reserve an IP address to the virtual MAC address. The short version. For each connected client, the extender creates a separate session with the upstream Wireless Router. The Extender generates a virtual MAC on the Upstream side, virtual MAC that can be identified to keep sessions in check. NG is not the only vendor doing this, and is not the only vendor that does not allow disabling of the Virtual MAC function.
Thank you for the detail explanation. I just don't understand why Vitural MACs are needed when MACs are unique. According to my observations, the EX7000 simply replaces the first 3 hex codes in the MAC with 02:0f:b5. I have 2 EX7000s, and both of them do the same thing with MACs. Why don't they just use original MACs?
When connected to my main router R7000, the original MAC is sent to my DHCP server (dnsmasq). When connected to an extender EX7000, a Virtual MAC is sent to the DHCP server. The switch-over seems to confuse some of my WiFi devices. Often they fail to obtain a new IP address and require an off-on cycle or even re-creating profile to obtain an IP address. And, they are not receiving the IP address I assigned due to Virtual MACs. Very frustrating.
Is there a technical reason for requireing Virtual MAC?
Yes, it is purely technical. Basically, it so that they can keep track of the WIFI sessions between Base router, extender, and client. Nothing concise on the internet I have found that describe it.
Extenders don't realy work as AP's. It is purley an extension of your wireless network. Not designed to roam, more of connect directly to the extended SSID when you are out of range of your Base router wifi. Then you have the whole client sticking issue, which is a completely different issue
I am having exactly the same challenges using MAC addresses to assign IP addresses to centrally administer IPs at the DHCP server (gateway). It is a pain in the butt. I will switch and try the linux DHCP workaround. However, the Netgear solution for extenders is fundamentally broken.
They are basically building a MAC level NAT. As such, the Netgear code should have done the DHCP IP address proxying for the virtual mac addresses (since it already has to negotiate MAC address availability and collision testing as it assigns virtual MAC addresses).
In other words, it should have let the real MAC address straight through for DHCP queries, intercepted, and translated it back to the device with the real MAC address. It should NOT be allowing DHCP queries to go out with the virtual MAC address. That is BROKEN! I am guessing they don't want to masquerade as the real MAC address in their packet filter for DHCP proxying. If that was the case they could have introduced a service into their primary AP that did the brokering. As it is, it is fundamentally flawed because it makes it very difficult to build a network at any scale with extenders.
Virtual MAC address mapping where a IP address is assigned to a pool of MAC addresses doesn't really help because they have multiple algorithms. It would be great if they had DHCP servers that were virtual MAC address aware since the virtual MAC addresses are algorithmically generated from the real primary MAC address. sigh....