MAC Filter does not work with aimesh node – what am I doing wrong?

[taha]

Hi,

I have an Asus XT9 as the master node in an aimesh set up with a TUF Gaming Ax5400 as an amiesh child node.

I have enabled the wireless MAC filter for both 2.4 and 5 GHZ with MAC Filter mode Accept – and this works fine when only the master XT9 router is running.

If I power on the child Ax5400 node, the wireless MAC filter no longer works and allows any device to connect.

Has anyone else seen this happen or am I doing something wrong?

 

Thank you

Taha

 

 

Share the knowledge

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

Welcome, does sound strange.

Probable a firmware bug, can you check if both the XT9 and Ax5400 are running the latest firmware.

Then check to ensure the XT9 is set up as ‘wireless router mode / Aimesh router mode (default)’ ?

Share the knowledge

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

You need to login in order to vote

[Grisu]

What you are doing wrong in my opinion is to use MAC-filter at all for your WLAN.
Your system isn’t more secure with it, as it is easily bypassed.

Share the knowledge

You need to login in order to vote

[taha]

Hi Grisu,

The reason I am trying to use this Wireless MAC Filter to allow access to only a set of devices is to prevent my elder son from by-passing other parental controls provided by the Asus Router. I have a schedule in place for some devices to block Interet access over night. My son simply uses randomised mac in his mobile phone wifi connection settings and gets the wifi password from the QR Code – he captures it and opens it in a QR App to reveal the password. If I can get the Wireless MAC Fitler to work, I can hopefully, stop him from using the randiomised mac part and it won’t matter if he gets the wifi password.

This is all new to me, I’m learning all the time. If there any other ways I can control access, please let me know.

Kind Regards,

Taha

 

Share the knowledge

You need to login in order to vote

[taha]

Hi UK Sentinal,

I’ve attached screen grabs showing the operation mode and firmware versions. I’ve tried doing a hard reset on the AX5400 box and re-added to the AIMesh but still the MAC Filter seems to stop working when this AX5400 is part of the aimesh. If I power off this AX5400 box so only the XT9 is powered on, the MAC Filter works fine as expected. I guess, next I will probably try doing a hard reset on the XT9 device but curious if anyone else has come across something similar. It is as if the MAC Filter settings are not being replicated to the AX5400 box but I don’t know how to access this node’s WEB UI if at all possible?

Thank all for your help

Regards,

Taha

 

Share the knowledge

Attachments:

1. 

   XT9-Operation-Mode.png
   

2. 

   Firmware-Versions.png
   

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

Children/teens are always most inventive

As a suggestion, you could approach this from at slightly different perspective, maybe ?

To Ensure all devices by default, including you own can only access appropriate web content (content filtered)

This can be achieved by setting you WAN DNS Server to something like OPEN DNS (family I think), this will ensure all users of the internet cannot access adult sites, gambling and VPN’s etc.

Is this the main concern or are you also concerned about actual online time also ?

For MaC filtering issue, try downgrading to ASUS TUF-AX5400 Firmware version 3.0.0.4.386.50224 and see if this helps ?

 

Share the knowledge

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

You need to login in order to vote

[taha]

Hi

Thank you for the WAN DNS Server tip, I’ve updated the DNS servers.

I tried reverting the fireware back but had the same issue, when the AX5400 is in the aimesh, the wirless MAC filter seems to be ignored.

For anyone else, I did manage to get this to work:

1. I powered off the AX5400 child node from the aimesh, leaving only the main XT9 running
2. I enabled the MAC Filter first on the 2.4 GHz band with the Accept mode
3. I then enabled the MAC Filter on the 5 GHz-1 band with the Accept mode
4. Powered on the AX5400 node
5. Finally I also enabled MAC Filter on the 5 GHz-2 band with the Accept mode  (this is my backbone band used for the aimesh)
   (for this I had to get the MAC addresses of the child AX5400 node from AiMesh->Network and added them to the Accept list)

I’m not sure why, but when I also enabled the MAC Filter on my backhaul/backbone 5 GHz-2 and added the MAC address for the router and the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wifi networks, it now seems to work as expected.

Thank all for your help and advice,

Kind Regards,

Taha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Share the knowledge

Liked by:

You need to login in order to vote

[UK Sentinel]

taha wrote:

I tried reverting the fireware back but had the same issue, when the AX5400 is in the aimesh, the wirless MAC filter seems to be ignored.

Glad you are all sorted and thanks for letting us know how you managed to get wireless mac filter working on you AX5400 AiMesh child node

Share the knowledge

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

You need to login in order to vote

[Author]

Posts