GL-AX1800 (as repeater) Proxy ARP and ARP spoofing

Routers
1

Here's my setup:

main openwrt router (wifi + eth) <---wifi link ---> GL-AX1800 as repeater (wifi + eth)

The main pc is connected using eth wire to the main router
The clients are connected using eth wire and wifi to the repeater.

On main pc, arp -a shows all clients connected via repeater has mac id of the repeater.

What prompted this investigation was that in main router, logread shows a lot of DHCP requests.
After asking Chatgpt/Grok/Deepseek, i came to the conclusion that this is the result of "arp proxy, or arp spoofing" from the repeater.

But the solution offered by these AI tools of setting sysctl net.ipv4.conf.all.proxy_arp=0, and setting indivdiual interface eht0, eth1, esta0,sta1, wlan0, wlan1... .proxy_arp=0, did nothing.

What else can I try?

3

Two personal suggestions, maybe you can try them.

  1. You can try to set the AX1800 to WDS bridge to avoid ARP confusion.
  2. Try to restore the AX1800 to factory settings and reconfigure the repeater function to avoid other incorrect configurations that may cause ARP anomalies.