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TL-WA850RE duplicate "virtual" Mac addresses

TL-WA850RE duplicate "virtual" Mac addresses

TL-WA850RE duplicate "virtual" Mac addresses
TL-WA850RE duplicate "virtual" Mac addresses
2025-05-03 08:51:39
Model: TL-WA850RE  
Hardware Version: V7
Firmware Version:

I have recently installed a TL-WA850RE to extend wireless range to back garden.

 

I have setup my Draytek router to use IP based MAC filtering, which combines IP reservation and MAC whitelisting.

 

I have reserved the range extenders physical MAC to IP 192.168.0.100 and successfully joined via WPS.

 

When joining my phone to the new network_EXT SSID, I observed that it's MAC address changed on the router DHCP table to a "virtual" MAC allocated by the range extender.

 

Not a problem, reserved this "virtual" MAC to IP 192.168.0.101. When my phone joins the network_EXT SSID it picks up this IP and works as expected...

However a problem arises when I attempt to connect a second device via the range extender. It's "virtual" MAC address is identical to the phone already connected to 192.168.0.102!

This means I have to disable my router's IP based mac filtering in order to use the range extender with more than one device.

Can someone recommend a different range extender model that provides unique "virtual" MAC addresses to each connected client instead of just one-for-all?

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3 Reply
Re:TL-WA850RE duplicate "virtual" Mac addresses
2025-05-03 13:47:18

FYI the physical MAC for the Range Extender is:

DA 47 32 FF 24 14

 

The "virtual" MAC address assigned to other devices according to router is one character different:

DA 47 32 0F 24 14

 

According to TP-Link's knowledge page here Proxy Mode - Retrieve Virtual MAC Address from the Wi-Fi Range Extender - Business Community a range extender should use either Proxy Mode or Many-to-One Mode?

 

I am running the latest firmware, and it appears that my TL-WA850RE is using neither of these modes strictly speaking. It's assigning a virtual MAC address, but only one and it is not based on a combination of RE MAC and device MAC as you'd normally expect?

 

Any advice would much appreciated, it would be ideal to get this extender working differently or I'll buy another if there is no way to work around this behaviour.

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#2
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Re:TL-WA850RE duplicate "virtual" Mac addresses
2025-05-04 22:11:47

  @daws0n 

 

Check this document - in there you can see in which mode a different RE models can work.

There are also a recommendations how to configure MAC filtering depending on the RE working mode.

 

If this was helpful click on the arrow pointing upward to make it blue. If this solves your issue, click the star to make it blue and mark the post as a "Recommended Solution".
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#3
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Re:TL-WA850RE duplicate "virtual" Mac addresses
2025-05-06 08:38:49

  @terziyski 

Thanks for the link. My range extender is a later version with blue GUI, so unfortunately the instructions do not apply.

 

My understanding re: Proxy-Mode is as follows:

 

If Range Extender MAC address is AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA and client MAC address is BB:BB:BB:BB:BB:BB, then virtual MAC address would be AA:AA:AA:BB:BB:BB - providing each client with a unique virtual MAC address (I could work with this no problem)

 

TL-WA850RE v7 does not behave this way.... Can you recommend a different model of Range Extender that adheres to proper Proxy-Mode MAC address allocation outlined in the article?

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