I saw another thread here that says that the EX6200 extender assigns so-called "virtual MAC addresses" to its clients. This might be why my laptop and iPad can't connect to wifi - I have MAC filtering turned on on the main router, and these virtual MAC addresses aren't registered. How do I figure out what they are, so that I can allow them?
If I were you I would just disable the MAC filtering on the router - it doesn't significantly enhance your security, and in this case, it's just creating a headache. The reason I say it doesn't enhance security is that it is very easy to bypass.
Let's look though at this "virtual MAC address" concept - which quite frankly I would see to believe.
IF your extender is functioning as a repeater (the extender itself connects to the router via wireless), it will/should substitute it's MAC address for the client's MAC address as/where necessary - as a repeater, the client has to send data to the extender, and the extender then repeats or retransmits that to the router, and the router must then reply to the extender which must then retransmit to the client - the data get's to it's destination based on the MAC address, so, since the client never connects directly to the router, what the router will/should see for all the repeater clients is the extender's MAC address - so adding that one MAC address should suffice.
"NETGEAR WiFi Range extender, wirelessly connected to the router, the MAC addresses of all the connected wired and wireless clients will be replaced by a virtual address."
> IF your extender is functioning as a repeater (the extender itself connects to the router via wireless), it will/should substitute it's MAC address for the client's MAC address as/where necessary - as a repeater, the client has to send data to the extender, and the extender then repeats or retransmits that to the router, and the router must then reply to the extender which must then retransmit to the client - the data get's to it's destination based on the MAC address, so, since the client never connects directly to the router, what the router will/should see for all the repeater clients is the extender's MAC address - so adding that one MAC address should suffice.
that's what I figured, but I did add the extender's (3) MAC addresses to the control list and that hasn't helped. What I do see is that the "Show connected devices" pane on this extender shows my laptop and next to it lists a "virtual MAC address" - must be used for something, right?
The EX6200 assigns a unique virtual MAC address to each device connected to it. If you use MAC filtering on the main router you would need to add each of the virtual MAC addresses to the filter list.
From the EX6200 Attached Devices help page:
Virtual MAC Address: This is the MAC address of your wireless devices observed from your extender. The MAC addresses of all of the devices that are attached to the Extender will be changed to virtual MAC addresses when traffic is transmitting from the devices to your extender.
If your extender enables a MAC filter/Access control list, you must add these Virtual MAC addresses into your extender.
