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I recently bought a Linksys EA2700-RM router for my home. I have set up the 5GHz network, the 2.4GHz network and the Guest network.
My 5GHz network is for highest priority devices, the 2.4GHz network is for lower priority connections (nothing on this network yet) and the guest network is for friends who visit.
Since I want to guard my high priority network, I enabled a MAC filter (whitelist) using the router settings I accessed over the browser. However, when a friend tried to connect to my guest network, she was unable to do so (failing to connect to the guest network and to the 2.4GHz network). She later connected to my 5GHz network after I added her MAC address to the filter.
I don't see anything the documentation about being able to specify separate MAC filters for each of my networks. Does anyone know if this is even possible, and if so, how I might go about implementing it?
inspectorG4dget
Posted 2013-09-29T22:47:36.830
Reputation: 1 153
Just don't use MAC filters for this. Just only give the encryption key to people who you want to have access to the network. – David Schwartz – 2013-09-30T06:53:23.427
@DavidSchwartz: I'm aware of that solution, which is not very attractive to me. This is why I was hoping for multiple MAC filters – inspectorG4dget – 2013-09-30T16:18:19.107
You'll get more useful answers if you explain why the normal solution isn't satisfactory. – David Schwartz – 2013-09-30T18:17:21.453
@DavidSchwartz: I'd like to be able to revoke access to devices, even after they've been on my network. Yes, this can be accomplished by changing the password, but that would require me to reassociate all my devices, which would be painful. MAC filtering is a cleaner solution – inspectorG4dget – 2013-09-30T20:55:46.233
That won't work. While someone is connected, they can assemble a list of all MAC addresses by watching traffic. Then when you revoke there's, they can just switch to a different MAC address that they know was authorized. It's much harder to revoke and reassign all MAC addresses than just a new network key. – David Schwartz – 2013-09-30T21:21:55.080
@DavidSchwartz: granted. But that's why I'm using multiple networks -you could become someone else's MAC on my guest network, at which point, I'll change the key. But I don't want to do that until I really need to (so others can continue to use the network without having to reassociate). So, step1: revoke your MAC from the whitelist. If that fails, step2: change the key. – inspectorG4dget – 2013-09-30T21:25:14.790