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Retired_Member's avatar
Retired_Member
Jun 12, 2022

MAC Address Filtering and multiple bands

Hi All!

 

I'm turing on my MAC address filtering (access control) on my R7000 (dual band) router. Because I have trouble with signal elsewhere on my property, I also have an AP which is dual band.

 

As I'm creating the allow list for all my devices, it looks like there is a different MAC address for each device depending on which band/connection it is using! So, I have 4x as many MAC address on the list as I think I should.

 

For example, on my phone I quickly switched my wifi from Router-2G to Router-5G to AP-5G. Then I looked at the router log and see three totally different MAC addresses being assigned to IP addresses.

 

[DHCP IP: (10.0.0.18)] to MAC address 0A:AA:A6:43:xx:xx, Sunday, Jun 12,2022 15:48:09
[DHCP IP: (10.0.0.22)] to MAC address 22:9B:A9:E6:xx:xx, Sunday, Jun 12,2022 15:48:03
[DHCP IP: (10.0.0.21)] to MAC address 2A:15:DA:21:xx:xx, Sunday, Jun 12,2022 15:47:57

 

(the xx is me redacting it, not what actually shows). I will say, when the device connects in the same way, it does always get the same MAC adress

 

Here's the question - if I set the control to "block all new devices", can I just add one of the many MAC addresses to the approve list, or would I have to do them all? If someone comes to visit and I add the MAC address manually from their phone/computer, will they be able to use all 4 bands in my house, or just one?

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