What are the wirelss clients under status tab?

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IMV8N
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 19 Apr 2022
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2022 1:01    Post subject: What are the wirelss clients under status tab? Reply with quote
When I navigate to Status > Sys Info and scroll down I see an area under wireless and then under Clients. I show MAC addresses for devices that I am not sure what they are. I just flashed this router yesterday and I have a new IP scheme. I also have a new wireless password that I have only put on two devices (my laptop and phone). However under wireless clients I show up to 6 devices that appear and disappear. What are these devices? Nobody knows my wireless password. There is nothing plugged into the LAN ports either.


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Wildlion
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 24 May 2016
Posts: 1407

PostPosted: Wed Apr 20, 2022 21:22    Post subject: Reply with quote
It would help if we know more about the router setup...

My first thought is that phones are now doing "random" MAC address so that could be possible.

you could click the MAC address and at least get the prefix vendor that could help you understand.
kalrez
DD-WRT Novice


Joined: 28 Jan 2022
Posts: 39

PostPosted: Thu Apr 21, 2022 12:12    Post subject: Reply with quote
Wildlion wrote:
It would help if we know more about the router setup...

My first thought is that phones are now doing "random" MAC address so that could be possible.

you could click the MAC address and at least get the prefix vendor that could help you understand.


Clicking on the MAC address does not always give you the Vendor, iPhones for instance has "Private Wi-Fi Address" (If user enabled it in their iPhone settings) and will give a false random Mac Address not associated with known Apple Vendor prefix. Apple introduced this to help reduce tracking across Wi-Fi networks.

When I first saw this in DHCP Status and under Wireless Nodes it puzzled me at first until I started experimenting with various settings and clients within my network.

In addition (At least with iPhones) by disconnecting Client from Wi-Fi and reconnecting a NEW MAC address will be handed out and the OLD MAC address will still show in DHCP under LAN until the lease runs out OR manually removing OR rebooting router.
SurprisedItWorks
DD-WRT Guru


Joined: 04 Aug 2018
Posts: 1445
Location: Appalachian mountains, USA

PostPosted: Fri Apr 22, 2022 15:28    Post subject: Reply with quote
Perhaps it depends on the iPhone model, but my old iPhone XS will always use the same MAC address when connecting to a given wifi SSID. Each SSID with "Private Wi-Fi Address" enabled will get a different MAC, and of course there is one shared MAC for all those SSIDs with that feature disabled, but a given SSID always gets the same MAC.

If your dd-wrt system offers your iPhone multiple wifi SSIDs to which you regularly connect, you can adapt to this multiple-MAC situation nicely in DNSmasq Additional Options with a line like

dhcp-host=MAC1,MAC2,MAC3,MyiPhone

where each of MAC1, MAC2, and MAC3 is a MAC address of the usual XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX form. This advises DNSmasq's DHCP system that all these MACs are for MyiPhone (whatever name you choose) and will never be present on the network simultaneously, so connecting from any one MAC will instantly release any lease present for any of the other MACs. You never end up with leftover leases for MyiPhone, and your status-tab listing of DHCP leases will always show device MyiPhone with the MAC corresponding to the currently connected SSID.

_________________
2x Netgear XR500 and 3x Linksys WRT1900ACSv2 on 53544: VLANs, VAPs, NAS, station mode, OpenVPN client (AirVPN), wireguard server (AirVPN port forward) and clients (AzireVPN, AirVPN, private), 3 DNSCrypt providers via VPN.
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