Folks, I'm having a heck of a time trying to stop these fake MAC addresses generated by my ReoLink cameras, they're taking up all the DHCP address range and causing a mess. The strange thing is that after they use the fake MAC address, they proceed to connect with the real MAC address on finalization (I assume its the real MAC address, but who knows). Reolink support wrongly stated that it was fixed in the latest firmware, which I already had, then they backtracked telling me not to block their fake MAC addresses or it will cause infinite reboots, in other words, MAC filtering is a bad idea. Can anyone understand what they're doing here and why?
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"The fake Mac address was used to detect whether the wifi of the camera is disconnect, which was used DHCP discovery protocols.
If the correct MAC address of the wifi camera was used, the camera will not able to get the DHCP IP address by default automatically.
We also don't suggest you block all the fake MAC addresses, the camera will still connect, but it will reboot itself while no one connects the camera.
Hope you can disregard such fake mac address in your router, which doesn't affect your use of the camera.
We will ask our senior engineer to change the code of the firmware and improve such issue."
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"Your camera is already in the latest firmware.
I will consult senior engineer again to get more details for you."
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"This fake mac address is just a kind of signal that indicating the camera is keep detecting the wifi and not disconnect with your home wifi.
Just consult with our senior engineer, now for the new firmware we have improved this problem and no random mac address.
Could you please send a screenshot to show us the firmware and we will send the new firmware to you?"
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"Just confirmed with our engineer, the fake Mac address was sent by our camera for Wifi detection.
Every time your camera was rebooted, the Mac address would be changed accordingly to make sure the wifi connection is stable. In this way, we can make sure the camera will automatically connect with your home wifi after reboot or power cut."