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Forum Discussion
molluskman
Jan 02, 2018Aspirant
Getting the MAC address of teh 5 GHz band
I have a R6300v2 dual band router and need to know the mac address of the 5 GHz band so that I can wirelessly attach a wireless access point. Is there a way to find this other than trying every possi...
- Jan 02, 2018
antinode wrote:
> [...] need to know the mac address of the 5 GHz band so that I can
> wirelessly attach a wireless access point.
At least one of us seems to be confused. I didn't think that a radio
("band") had a MAC address (which might be why ADVANCED > ADVANCED Home
shows only two: one for the LAN ("Router Information"), one for the WAN
("Internet Port")).I no longer run stock firmware. The third-party firmware that I am currently using does, in fact, use a different MAC on its 5 GHz interface. If the stock firmware doesn't show the MAC address, there are several other ways to figure it out. The simplest may be to connect a computer to the 5 GHz band, run arp -a from a Command Prompt (Windows) or Terminal (Mac) and look for the MAC address listed next to the router's IP address.
On Windows, you can also run netsh wlan show interfaces. The MAC address will be listed as the BSSID. On a Mac, hold down the Option key and click on the Wi-Fi icon on the top right. The BSSID will be listed there.
If you have a Wi-Fi analyzer app, the BSSID will often be listed.
Also, in my experience, "wireless access point" is normally used to
describe a device which is connected by wire to a primary router, and
which offers wireless access in its vicinity. See, for example, in the
R6300v2 User Manual, "Wireless Access Point (AP)", page 100.Technically, every router is the combination of a wireless access point, switch, firewall and IP router. The wireless access point is internally wired to the IP router through the switch.
Perhaps it would help if you described in basic terms exactly what
you want to achieve, rather than ask how to obtain some particular
information which may not exist, in order to do something which may be
self-contradictory.OP stated that he is trying to create a wireless connection to another Access Point. IOW, he is creating a wireless bridge, possibly using WDS. WDS, in particular, requires the MAC address to be known.
antinode
Jan 02, 2018Guru
> [...] need to know the mac address of the 5 GHz band so that I can
> wirelessly attach a wireless access point.
At least one of us seems to be confused. I didn't think that a radio
("band") had a MAC address (which might be why ADVANCED > ADVANCED Home
shows only two: one for the LAN ("Router Information"), one for the WAN
("Internet Port")).
Also, in my experience, "wireless access point" is normally used to
describe a device which is connected by wire to a primary router, and
which offers wireless access in its vicinity. See, for example, in the
R6300v2 User Manual, "Wireless Access Point (AP)", page 100.
Perhaps it would help if you described in basic terms exactly what
you want to achieve, rather than ask how to obtain some particular
information which may not exist, in order to do something which may be
self-contradictory.
If you don't already have it, then visit http://netgear.com/support ,
put in your model number, and look for Documentation. Get the User
Manual.
molluskman
Jan 02, 2018Aspirant
I should have called it a point-to-point bridge. Sorry.
Yes, I have read the user's manual.
Each band on a dual band router has its own MAC address. I have a WNDR3700 router on which I installed dd-wrt and the 2.4 GHz band MAC address ends in 55 while the 5 GHz band MAC address ends in 57. They are seperate network interfaces so they need distinct physical addresses.