Network

[BWaters]

Hi. My sons iPhone is showing up as a network in the list of devices. Other iPhones show up correctly. Why would this be happening?

[CrimpOn]

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@BWaters wrote:
Hi. My sons iPhone is showing up as a network in the list of devices. Other iPhones show up correctly. Why would this be happening?

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I suspect that there are two factors contributing to this phenomenon:

• Netgear uses a combination of Netgear software and the Fing app (https://www.fing.com/ ) to guess what a device is based on the hardware MAC address of the ethernet or WiFi connection.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address 
• Newer iPhone software defaults to creating a random MAC address when connecting to WiFi networks.
  https://support.apple.com/guide/security/wi-fi-privacy-secb9cb3140c/web 

When the Orbi firmware encounters a MAC address that  does not appear to belong to a specific manufacturer, it may "guess" as to what kind of device this is.

Can you please look at the Network "Settings" on this iPhone and see if it is using a randomized MAC address or the "hardware MAC address"?

[BWaters]

Thanks. The private setting was on so we have turned it off. The name of his phone now comes up under the listed devices. However it still shows as a network rather than a device.

[CrimpOn]

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@BWaters wrote:
Thanks. The private setting was on so we have turned it off. The name of his phone now comes up under the listed devices. However it still shows as a network rather than a device.

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Sometimes Orbi just misclassifies things.  I believe there is a way to manually set the device type.

[BWaters]

Thanks. My concern was that my son had done something to his phone that he should not have like a VPN that allowed him to his thing from us. That appears not to be the case?

[CrimpOn]

I agree.