PompeyGlen wrote

My kids are configuring their devices to get dynamic Mac Addresses, therefore all the parental controls on the Deco app are completely obsolete.

 

Is there anyway to deal with this in the app yet e.g. Don't allow new devices?

 

I see users have been asking for a solution to this in these forums for about 5 years.

  @PompeyGlen don't you mean the devices are using private MAC addresses?

The change that has been done by phone and tablet manufactures (and I think Windows may also be doing it now) have been around for a while.

Mostly this is not something that the device user does, it's automatically done by the device and disabling it can be a pain since it often get changed back by the device.

I don't have any good ideas of how it could be resolved. 

ImtiazAli wrote

@raven-au No, it's a manual option now (it has been for years) in the phone's Wi-Fi settings.

 

You can keep it to "use device MAC" or change it to "use private/randomized MAC"

  @ImtiazAli I know, what I was complaining about is that it often gets set back to use a private MAC address.

I see that it mostly dosn't happen on my Android phone any more but the iDevices (eg. iPhone, iPad) seem to set it back fairly often, don't know what events cause it.

I'm left with trying to track them down quite frequently which is quite difficult.

Thanks for replies.

This is a fundamental flaw in the system.

I tried to work around it by trying to set reservations for every device, to then enable me to set a very tight DHCP pool and effectively that would exclude anything unknown.  However the app is beyond frustrating, and would constantly report 'Failed' on every attempt to set a reservation.

I have taken out the 5 Deco devices I had covering my property and replaced with a Unifi Cloud Gateway and 1 Ubiquiti AP which covers my whole home and gives professional grade network management way beyond what the Deco stuff could do.