Not sure if this is the correct place to ask this but it is driving me crazy.
I have one particular iPhone in my home that shows twice in my router. Both have the same IP address but different MAC addresses. One shows “Static” and the other shows “DHCP”.
The reason it’s driving me mad is because the static one always shows at home which makes occupancy automations irrelevant because that device is always showing home when it actually isn’t.
Has anyone experienced this? Not sure if it’s an iPhone or router issue. I can’t find a way to resolve it because the router manager doesn’t allow to delete a device that is connected and the one that’s always connected is the one I need to remove.
Turn Wifi off on phone
reboot router
let router start up login have t a look see if gone
then turn wifi on phone and see
think you need to find out which is the right mac address also.
The odd thing is we have 2 iPhones and 2 iPads. Not all of them are showing DHCP and Static on the router even though I’ve confirmed the network settings on each device are set the same. Two are showing twice but the other two just show a single entry in the router.
Also, why would the static one continually show as “home” when they’re not?
How do I get around this for occupancy? Can I use the MAC address to identify the device linked to a person instead? If so, how would I do that?
One of the phones shows DHCP in the router with the MAC address listed in the WiFi settings, but the Static entry on the router for the same device shows a MAC address found in Settings > General > About
My own phone, that is only showing DHCP on the router also has two different MAC addresses, in the same settings as above but only shows in the router once and there is no problem with that as far as occupancy tracking is concerned.
After some investigation I’ve found that you are correct, Nick. So thanks for highlighting that.
By removing “Private IP”, which is a new setting in iOS 14, it’s resolves the issue, albeit, maybe at the cost of reduced security?
Apple say the setting ensures a different MAC address is used on each network to avoid device/person tracking across different networks.
I’m not tech savvy enough regarding networking and network protocols to know if by having just the one MAC address per device will cause security issues across different networks or not.
In the same way that you use the MAC address of the phone to track yourself, others can too. Theoretically they can learn your MAC address and track you across numerous services. I am sure there are people who will do this, but they probably only want to track you if you are a security risk. All a bit frightening really.