Lead In

After connecting the range extender to the Host router, sometimes you might run into the following issues:

• There are several new clients under the client list. It seems like your own devices as their IP addresses match, albeit with slightly different MAC addresses.
• The host router was set with MAC filtering enabled, allowing only clients from the allowed MAC address list. However, when a client connects to the range extender, it can connect to the internet even though it isn't in the list of permitted addresses.

 

This article will help you understand what happened and how to make the extender work as expected.

For TP-Link Range extenders, there are primarily two methods for handling the Client MAC Address during data forwarding, many-to-one mode & Proxy mode.

How Proxy Mode/Many-to-One Mode works

When a client is directly connected to Archer AX72, on the client list of AX72, it will display its real MAC address.

• Under Proxy Mode, Take Archer AX72 and RE500 for example.

RE500 supports neither EasyMesh nor OneMesh and will work like a standard wireless extender for AX72.

You can see RE500 has replaced the first parts of the real MAC address of the client #M2021K11AC with its vendor ID. So AX72 takes it as a different device and assigns another IP address.

• Under Many-to-one Mode, Take RE700x and Archer AX72 for example.

EasyMesh has been disabled and RE700x also works like a standard wireless extender for AX72.

Here RE700X has replaced the MAC address #M2021K11AC completely with its own MAC address in the client list.

 

In Summary, Here is how they work:

	RE500+AX72 （proxy mode）	RE700X+AX72 (many-to-one mode)
Phone’s Real MAC Address	88-46-04-41-92-18	88-46-04-41-92-18
Phone’s Virtual MAC Address	76-DE-AD-41-92-18	0A-85-00-07-AA-DD
RE’s MAC Address	76-DE-AD-DD-33-84	0A-85-00-07-AA-DD

 

How can I retrieve the virtual MAC address from the Wi-Fi Range Extender to set up an Access List?

• Under Proxy Mode, the users need to add both the real and virtual MAC addresses into the Allow list.

For detailed instructions, please refer to How to set up Mac Filtering on router to control the devices connected to the range extender.

• Under many-to-one mode, it is not suggested to enable Whitelist/MAC Filtering on the host router.

What if the extender is establishing an EasyMesh/OneMesh network with the host router?

With EasyMesh/OneMesh enabled, the extender will not edit the real MAC address on the clients. They will show up with their real MAC addresses in the online client list on both the extender and host router.