I believe that log message is related to a loopback present on your LAN and is related to WAN NAT redirection. In looking for discussion about this log message, I found the following forum threads:
In regards to the MAC address situation, on which particular interfaces is the MAC address the same? I relented to not copying and pasting any threads returned by this search:
Joined: 31 Jul 2021 Posts: 2146 Location: All over YOUR webs
Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2022 6:59 Post subject:
You can safely ignore that message, br0 is a bridge, bridges are aggregates of several interfaces (into a single interface in this case br0), by default br0 has several interfaces aggregated so it will happen, but its not a concern.
If you want to check the current MAC addresses, navigate to Setup tab -> Networking tab and you can see what interfaces are aggregated into br0 and the corresponding MAC addresses further down on that page that correspond to these interfaces.
If you look carefully some of those interfaces will have the same MAC address, ill let you figure out why, check any matching MAC's against eth1.
Also you dont mention your DD-WRT version or your router brand+version, I don't recommend messing around in the networking tab with old DD-WRT builds and on specific platforms by using the networking tab to change MAC addresses, I know from a good authority this needs testing and may not be fully implemented in all platforms.
Joined: 31 Jul 2021 Posts: 2146 Location: All over YOUR webs
Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2022 10:57 Post subject:
Reports on build threads are ignored regarding this subject because, it's not a bug or issue, it's simply working as how it is setup per default or non default configs where MAC addresses maybe duplicated on various interfaces and all are aggregated under the same bridge.
Understand what a bridge is and how it works, routers have 1 MAC address per unique wifi radio, 1 mac address for the switch (some routers have more physical interfaces so more unique MACs e.g. R9000 has 2 switches). So there is a limited set of physical interfaces with unique MAC addresses to begin.
Then enter virtual lan interfaces or virtual ap's these all need a mac address
you have a switch with 4 lan ports and 1 wan port and the r7000 only has 3 real unique mac addresses 1 per radio 1 for switch = 3 if my math is correct.
It is safe to set your own unique MAC addresses to resolve the annoying messages since all aggregated interfaces on the bridge some may have duplicated mac addresses and hence this will happen.
Reports on build threads are ignored regarding this subject because, it's not a bug or issue, it's simply working as how it is setup per default or non default configs where MAC addresses maybe duplicated on various interfaces and all are aggregated under the same bridge.
Understand what a bridge is and how it works, routers have 1 MAC address per unique wifi radio, 1 mac address for the switch (some routers have more physical interfaces so more unique MACs e.g. R9000 has 2 switches). So there is a limited set of physical interfaces with unique MAC addresses to begin.
Then enter virtual lan interfaces or virtual ap's these all need a mac address
you have a switch with 4 lan ports and 1 wan port and the r7000 only has 3 real unique mac addresses 1 per radio 1 for switch = 3 if my math is correct.
It is safe to set your own unique MAC addresses to resolve the annoying messages since all aggregated interfaces on the bridge some may have duplicated mac addresses and hence this will happen.
Several ways to solve exist depending on your setup, but simplest IMO is to assign unique MACs to each interface be that physical or virtual.
The problem is that even with unique MAC addresses the error messages are there. It seems to be related to wireless. As I get a message every few minutes, if I turn off wifi completely (both radios) then there are no messages at all (tested for many hours).
Now to make things a bit worse, with last build new message started appearing (no change in config):
Joined: 31 Jul 2021 Posts: 2146 Location: All over YOUR webs
Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2022 10:05 Post subject:
Well, I can say with certainty that modding the MAC addresses here assigning unique MACs made that message go away.
I only have br0 and two unbridged VAPS, the interfaces aggregated under br0 all have unique MACs on my setup and those messages are gone.
MAC Cloning WAN side has a unique MAC now which is vlan2 for both R7000 and my RT-AC68U
vlan2 has a unique MAC assigned.
vlan1 has a unique MAC assigned.
eth1 is the 2.4 Ghz radio the PHY is AKA wl0 - I also have assigned a different MAC here
eth2 is the 5 Ghz radio the PHY is AKA wl1 - I also have assigned a different MAC here
br0 also has a unique MAC assigned.
Both my VAPs wl0.1 adn wl1.1 have Unique MACs assigned but they are unbridged.
re: [eth1: bad address] message
I think that message maybe goes back to some other issue unrelated to the previous messages in discussion, I cant find the thread now, but you can confirm by running;
Then scroll up to see if you have same message there which indicates this where the MACs are concerned.
Code:
base addr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:A4
local bit addr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:A4
eth2: Bad address
So this is part of the other old issue. Its non critical and can be ignored, its just annoying all these messages are annoying but non critical and wont likely get fixed because they are non critical. However patches are welcome.
If you have other setup, then share screenshots and obviously feel free to gray out the MACs