Sorry, I meant to clone the Mac computer’s MAC address to the router, not the iPhone’s MAC address, because the Mac is able to connect.
You can check the System Log and the Kernel Log in the LuCi UI, under the Status tab. You can also do it SSH:
logread
dmesg
OK, cloning the Macs MAC makes more sense 
But unfortunately the same thing happens.
I was able to extract the relevant part of the log files, but I don’t see anything useful in particular. Maybe you will.
This is after pluggin in the iPhone via USB:
Fri Jan 14 16:17:19 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 363.963629] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-platform
Fri Jan 14 16:17:20 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Interface 'tethering' is enabled
Fri Jan 14 16:17:20 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 364.441070] ipheth 1-1:4.2: Apple iPhone USB Ethernet device attached
Fri Jan 14 16:17:20 2022 kern.err usbmuxd[12724]: [1] Another instance is already running (pid 12648). exiting.
Fri Jan 14 16:17:21 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Network device 'eth1' link is up
Fri Jan 14 16:17:21 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Interface 'tethering' has link connectivity
Fri Jan 14 16:17:21 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Interface 'tethering' is setting up now
Fri Jan 14 16:17:22 2022 daemon.notice netifd: tethering (12833): udhcpc: started, v1.30.1
Fri Jan 14 16:17:22 2022 daemon.notice netifd: tethering (12833): udhcpc: sending discover
Fri Jan 14 16:17:22 2022 kern.err usbmuxd[12879]: [1] Another instance is already running (pid 12849). exiting.
Fri Jan 14 16:17:23 2022 kern.err usbmuxd[12910]: [1] Another instance is already running (pid 12849). exiting.
Fri Jan 14 16:17:25 2022 daemon.notice netifd: tethering (12833): udhcpc: sending discover
Fri Jan 14 16:17:28 2022 daemon.notice netifd: tethering (12833): udhcpc: sending discover
And this is when I tried to connect to it via WiFi:
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 user.info : saved ssid ignore: Zolcsi 0
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 user.info : [ 810] gl-sdk>> bIsSaved=0, ssid=Zolcsi, encryption=psk2, bssid=02:44:34:8F:8D:9E, wds=0, device=radio1, identity=, channel=6
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 user.info : [ 3043] gl-wifi-core>> bIsStaEnabled=1
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: interface state ENABLED->DISABLED
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-DISABLED
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 daemon.notice hostapd: nl80211: deinit ifname=wlan1 disabled_11b_rates=0
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 794.345003] device wlan1 left promiscuous mode
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 794.349693] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered disabled state
Fri Jan 14 16:24:29 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Network device 'wlan1' link is down
Fri Jan 14 16:24:31 2022 daemon.err hostapd: Configuration file: /var/run/hostapd-phy1.conf
Fri Jan 14 16:24:31 2022 daemon.notice netifd: radio1 (23526): sh: /usr/bin/ovs-vsctl: not found
Fri Jan 14 16:24:31 2022 daemon.notice netifd: radio1 (23526): sh: /usr/bin/ovs-vsctl: not found
Fri Jan 14 16:24:31 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 795.664191] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered blocking state
Fri Jan 14 16:24:31 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 795.669685] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered disabled state
Fri Jan 14 16:24:31 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 795.675524] device wlan1 entered promiscuous mode
Fri Jan 14 16:24:31 2022 daemon.err hostapd: Using interface wlan1 with hwaddr e4:95:6e:4a:5e:fe and ssid "GL-AR750S-efe"
Fri Jan 14 16:24:31 2022 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: interface state UNINITIALIZED->ENABLED
Fri Jan 14 16:24:31 2022 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-ENABLED
Fri Jan 14 16:24:32 2022 daemon.notice wpa_supplicant[23758]: Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
Fri Jan 14 16:24:32 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Interface 'wwan' is enabled
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice wpa_supplicant[23766]: wlan-sta: SME: Trying to authenticate with 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e (SSID='Zolcsi' freq=2437 MHz)
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 797.542181] wlan-sta: authenticate with 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 797.560378] wlan-sta: send auth to 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e (try 1/3)
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice wpa_supplicant[23766]: wlan-sta: Trying to associate with 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e (SSID='Zolcsi' freq=2437 MHz)
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 797.568695] wlan-sta: authenticated
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 797.583209] wlan-sta: associate with 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e (try 1/3)
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Network device 'wlan-sta' link is up
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Interface 'wwan' has link connectivity
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Interface 'wwan' is setting up now
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 797.618926] wlan-sta: RX AssocResp from 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=1)
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 797.627332] wlan-sta: associated
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice wpa_supplicant[23766]: wlan-sta: Associated with 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice wpa_supplicant[23766]: wlan-sta: CTRL-EVENT-SUBNET-STATUS-UPDATE status=0
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice wpa_supplicant[23766]: wlan-sta: WPA: Key negotiation completed with 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice wpa_supplicant[23766]: wlan-sta: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e completed [id=0 id_str=]
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 kern.debug kernel: [ 797.680252] wlan-sta: Limiting TX power to 20 (20 - 0) dBm as advertised by 02:44:34:8f:8d:9e
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 797.807233] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered blocking state
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 kern.info kernel: [ 797.812748] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered forwarding state
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice netifd: Network device 'wlan1' link is up
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice netifd: wwan (23792): udhcpc: started, v1.30.1
Fri Jan 14 16:24:33 2022 daemon.notice netifd: wwan (23792): udhcpc: sending discover
Fri Jan 14 16:24:35 2022 user.info : [ 817] gl-sdk>> wifi_join return=0, channel=6
Fri Jan 14 16:24:36 2022 daemon.notice netifd: wwan (23792): udhcpc: sending discover
Fri Jan 14 16:24:39 2022 daemon.notice netifd: wwan (23792): udhcpc: sending discover
Can you also post the Kernel Log (dmesg)?
Can you test connecting the router to home wifi or another wifi service, instead of your iPhone? If it succeeds, then the issue is within the iPhone. If it fails, then the issue is within the router.
My GL-AR750S with the same firmware works/connects to my home wifi successfully.
Yeah, of course. This is the kernel log after connecting the phone with USB:
[ 128.066214] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-platform
[ 128.282634] ipheth 1-1:4.2: Apple iPhone USB Ethernet device attached
And this is what is logged after connecting to the phone via WiFi:
[ 260.499799] device wlan1 left promiscuous mode
[ 260.504527] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered disabled state
[ 261.762118] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered blocking state
[ 261.767667] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered disabled state
[ 261.773411] device wlan1 entered promiscuous mode
[ 263.305106] wlan-sta: authenticate with ae:b1:a0:17:9e:bd
[ 263.323319] wlan-sta: send auth to ae:b1:a0:17:9e:bd (try 1/3)
[ 263.331628] wlan-sta: authenticated
[ 263.346212] wlan-sta: associate with ae:b1:a0:17:9e:bd (try 1/3)
[ 263.357653] wlan-sta: RX AssocResp from ae:b1:a0:17:9e:bd (capab=0x431 status=0 aid=1)
[ 263.366051] wlan-sta: associated
[ 263.369563] wlan-sta: Limiting TX power to 20 (20 - 0) dBm as advertised by ae:b1:a0:17:9e:bd
[ 263.526391] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered blocking state
[ 263.531889] br-lan: port 2(wlan1) entered forwarding state
I tried to connect the router to my normal home wifi and it worked fine. I know that connecting to the iPhone via WiFi is tricky (I tried a TP Link router before with partial success), I read a lot about that, and I did not expect it to work. However I think that the USB tethering should work and I really don’t know what could be the reason for its failure.
Also, I tried again with my wifes iPhone 11 and still no luck 
It looks like the issue is with the iPhone’s, which tend to be tricky (other Apple products also). The home wifi connection test was to eliminate possibilities, in case there is a router configuration issue.
I notice the message “Limiting TX power to 20 (20 - 0) dBm” in both System Log and Kernel log which is sent from iPhone to the router. My suspicion is that it detects the router and tells it not to transmit ??? I had hoped the the MAC address cloning would be enough to spoof iPhone detection.
More info here that may be relevant (?):
This may not matter.
Currently I have no idea of why some iphone cannot tethering.
From our support we got several cases related to this. Some cases just resolved for no reason, i.e. when tried another time, it just works.
I had similar problem before with my iphone 11 but it generally resolves after multiple disable and renable hotspot. But recently with ios15 I seldom have a problem when tethering.
I just tried today and here is how it happens.
iPhone 11 with IOS 15.1
AR750S with firmware 3.211
So from above, the only way is multiple turn off hotspot, wait 5 seconds, enable again and click connect again.
I found this patch for iPhone XR running iOS 14 from User wnienhaus.
This modifies the iphone binary to change all references from 1516 buffer size to 1514 buffer size.
I checked on my GL-AR300M and ios 15.1
Didn’t install any patches - tethering work well:
OpenWrt 19.07.7, r11306-c4a6851c72
/lib/modules/4.14.221/ipheth.ko
I found that my IPHETH_BUF_SIZE=0x5ea (1514 bytes)
And in my log:
daemon.notice netifd: Interface ‘tethering’ is setting up now
kern.info kernel: [ 365.075570] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth2: link becomes ready
daemon.notice netifd: tethering (8140): udhcpc: started, v1.30.1
daemon.notice netifd: tethering (8140): udhcpc: sending discover
daemon.notice netifd: tethering (8140): udhcpc: sending select for 172.20.10.4
daemon.notice netifd: tethering (8140): udhcpc: lease of 172.20.10.4 obtained, lease time 86400
daemon.info dnsmasq[8174]: started, version 2.80 cachesize 150
…
I forwarded to engineers to have a check.
Thanks for posting.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it!
However I think I might be on to something. At first I tried to upgrade to a more recent OpenWRT but this didn’t help either. So I started digging around the OpenWRT docs and issues and forums and etc… Anyway, I found out that my provider assigns an IPv6 address with /64 subnet to me an that might be causing the issue. I stumbled upon this article:
I tried the IPv6 masquerading, tried the IPv6 relaying (they suggest that for /64 subnets) and finally it seems that as suggested lastly, creating two parallel interfaces for tethering, one with DHCPv6 and one with regular DHCP seems to work.
Now this is a bit of an uncharted territory for me, but I believe now OpenWRT does NAT-ing between the two interfaces somehow. But if /64 subnet really means that I have a gazillion addresses to use, being able to use them and bridging the local network with the ISP would be a better solution (I guess that’s what relaying would’ve done), but so far I’m fine with this solution as well, because I need this only as a failover.
Now I just need to test what happens when I restart everything and just plug the phone back in, hopefully it’ll just work
Anyway, I hope you can incorporate a fix for this into the official firmware, let me know if you need any help on this.
If you enable IPv6 on the router, you will find two modes: NAT6 or Native mode. You can try these two mode?
Thanks very much for the suggesstion, it almost solved my issue!
So first of all I went from the latest OpenWRT firmware back to the latest official firmware that is 3.211at the moment.
Then I turned on IPv6 support and changed it to NAT6. By default this was not working for me, but I noticed that my mac got an IPv6 address as well. So I went ahead, installed Luci and checked out the details. On the interfaces panel I saw that there was a wan6 interface now, that was an alias to the regular wan. But instead of having an address, it said that the device is not present. So I started guessing and edited the wan6 interface, and changed the device from @wan to eth1. After only this change everything started working. It got an IPv6 address and the computer also had internet connectivity.
Interesting thing is that on the regular admin page it didn’t see the internet connection (the tethering icon is gray as the others), but that wouldn’t concern me (and I think this is only because I messed with the default configuration). However after a reboot everything was back to the original settings with the @wan device instead of eth1.
Now I know my use case is special, because I don’t use the regular wan port, only the USB tethering interface, but I would be really glad if you could incorporate a fix somehow for this in the next release.
My exact usage is this:
At home I have a USG-3P as a main router with a wired ISP. Now that sometimes fail, so I need to tether my phone into the wan2 port of the USG, and I would like to achieve that by having the AR750S plugged in constantly but with its power turned off. So when my ISP fails then I just turn on the AR750, hook up my phone to it and I have internet everywhere again. Now this is almost possible except that I need to enter the GUI and change the device after the bootup. (and sometimes I’m not home, only my wife… )
So I hope you can help me out on that somehow
Oh, also Native mode for IPv6 is straight up not working in my case, my computer doesn’t get an IPv6 address for some reason, not even after doing the @wan->eth1 switch.
Thanks again for your help!
native teljesen kuka
eth1 interface is the iPhone interface. Can you confirm that you made it work manually?
Have you tried to tethering your phone to your computer? Does your computer get IPV6 as well?
How about sharing phone as a hotspot via wifi? Is it IPV6?
Hi,
yes I can confirm, that with the manual changes mentioned above, it was al working fine.
Tethering via USB os via WiFi to my computer I got an IPv6 address both time.
I tried one more thing: I tried the repeater function of the router to connect to my phone’s WiFi hotspot with the IPv6 option enabled, but everything was the same. Then I opened Luci, found a new interface called WWAN that was set to use DHCP. Switched it to DHCPv6 and now everything works just fine via WiFi hotspot option. (But the main screen still doesn’t show internet connectivity) Unfortunately, this also gets reset to a regular DHCP after a reboot, so this is pretty much the same as with the USB tethering option.
Hi there,
so I was wondering if you could tell me: will there be a fix for this issue? No rush or anything, I’m just wondering if I should wait for an official firmware update or update the router to a standard OpenWRT installation, and maybe check back on the official firmwares from time to time.
Thanks,
Zoltan
Yes there will be a fix for tethering via ipv6. Fortunately we do have ipv6 on phone and be able to set up the dev environment.
That sounds great, then I’ll just wait for your upgrade. Let me know if you need any help testing.
Cheers
So this worked for my Android 5G WiFi hotspot device (not a phone). I had already enabled Luci & saw the Wan6 interface, but didn’t know that was for. The tethering interface showed the usb0 connected, but no internet connection. After reading this post, I turned on the IPv6 & it automatically filled in the info for both the router & luci wan6 interfaces; internet connection successful!! Thx so much for sharing your struggle. Now I can work on VPN & multi wan set up… 