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Forum Discussion
Undesirable spoofed MAC addresses on WiFi Extenders
I have two WiFi extenders, an EAX15 and a fairly ancient WNCE3001. Both of them exhibit the same undesirable behavior. In both cases, I am actually not using them as extenders but merely to prov...
sadly, thats how it works when you use an extender.
Thank you for the reply. The article you linked is a bit different than my situation I think, though it is a bit confusing.
The article seems to talk about the the MAC addresses for wireless devices connected to the extender. I am not using the extender that way - the attached devices are connected only to the ethernet port of the adapter, not wirelessly.
The article also seems to say that the attached devices get a virtual MAC address which is different from the MAC address of the extender. That would be fine with me, as long as the MAC address of the attached devices were not the same as the MAC address of the extender. Supplying identical MAC addresses for different IPs is a recipe for confusion.
Do you know the rationale for this strange MAC choice? I can't think of a scenario where it is beneficial.
Again, thank you.
the article wasn't the best. You're right.
When the extender is setup as a repeater, virtual mac addresses are how it allows it to connect more devices to the router.
Standard routers (not all) can only connect so many devices to it. Extenders use their mac address (in the router) so the router is only counting it as a single device and then the extender hands out virtual addresses to connected devices.
Thats a simplified way of putting it. Doesn't matter if its over wireless or through the ethernet.
You can search online and see this is a common issue of using extenders with what you're attempting.
I appreciate the explanation, and your explanation makes sense.
It's too bad this behavior can't be disabled. I have no problems with the number of devices connected to my router, but having the same MAC address show up on different IPs is causing me problems.
Is there a way to suggest to Netgear that they make this an optional behavior?
plemans wrote:sadly, thats how it works when you use an extender.
Thank you for your input and for sharing the link to the NETGEAR support article. While it's true that extenders often exhibit this behavior of spoofing MAC addresses, Y9 it seems the issue here goes beyond the typical operation of a Wi-Fi Range Extender.
The problem isn't just about retrieving the virtual MAC address; it's more about the extender not forwarding the actual MAC address of the connected device. This is causing confusion for network monitoring tools which rely on MAC addresses to identify individual devices.
> The problem isn't just about retrieving the virtual MAC address; it's more about the
> extender not forwarding the actual MAC address of the connected device. This is
< causing confusion for network monitoring tools which rely on MAC addresses to
< identify individual devices.
Absolutely correct.