MAC clone with GL-MT300N not working?

alzhao · 2016-04-14T16:57:11.000Z

@jogl, I justed tested and I don’t have any problem to clone my mac address.

What mac address did you change to?

jogl · 2016-04-15T05:22:37.000Z

I’ll check again tomorrow. I tried several, I tried some from two of my normal devices and some based on the device MAC and changed some random parts to test, e.g. if the mac ended with …:ee I chose …:e1 instead.

Maybe I should note that I was connected via Wifi to the GL-MT300N and it was connected to another Wifi router as client. I did not try if changing the mac works when using a wired WAN connection. Although I also tried when I was connected to the LAN port. I had a brief look into the logs and there was some error with the wifi-phy1.pid - I did not test more, because I always had to perform a reset to get the GL-MT300N back to access the internet and I tried it multiple times with different MACs. Can you give me an example MAC to test that you know is working for you? Did you test it for the wifi client mac (not wired)?

alzhao · 2016-04-15T16:47:38.000Z

Thanks for report. I just tested, mac clone on wifi STATION mode is not working on MT300N. I am not sure if this is a software bug, driver or hardware limitations. I hope to find a solution.

jogl · 2016-04-22T05:20:59.000Z

Any news? This feature would be quite important for me.

alzhao · 2016-04-23T10:45:22.000Z

@jogl, unfortunately we cannot solve this problem so quickly. This problem is not in any of our other models, only MT300N. I am pushing our engineers to solve this.

jogl · 2016-04-23T16:20:58.000Z

OK, thanks. Is it at least clear already if it can be fixed?

Are the AR150 and MT300A not affected?

alzhao · 2016-04-23T16:28:38.000Z

It is not clear about the reason. MT300A and AR150 do not have this problem.

jogl · 2016-04-24T22:47:20.000Z

Doesn’t the MT300A have the same chipset as the MT300N? I see the MT7620A in both descriptions.

alzhao · 2016-04-25T12:33:39.000Z

No.

MT300N uses MTK7620N SoC

MT300A uses MTK7620A Soc

These two chipset has similar specs, but MTK 7620A (MT300A) support PCIE and MMC storage.

kaulazs · 2016-04-29T14:39:03.000Z

Hi,

I have the same router, which has the same problem. It would be good to find out how to solve what problem.

kaulazs · 2016-05-11T21:34:28.000Z

Is there a possibility to change the MAC address by my self? (without UI)

alzhao · 2016-05-12T10:06:53.000Z

@kaulazs, no. It is not the UI. It is something in the driver which I didn’t figure out. So you cannot change by hand.

alzhao · 2016-05-17T17:29:00.000Z

After a thorough test, I have to say that MT300A doesn’t support changing mac address in repeater mode. I made some mistakes in my previous test.

Atheros chips don’t have this issue.

jogl · 2016-05-20T06:10:09.000Z

Does this mean that the MT300A and MT300N both do not support changing the mac address at all? That it is not technically possible? I had ordered a MT300A hoping it would support this feature.

alzhao · 2016-05-20T12:54:37.000Z

To be precise, it doesn’t support changing mac address for wireless interfaces when you use as repeater and ap at the same time.

But it can be used to change mac address when in ap mode only.

jogl · 2016-05-25T23:54:31.000Z

Is it possible to solve this with software in the future? The MT300A is not better than the MT300N in this respect?

thep · 2016-05-26T17:38:12.000Z

Hope that too i bought two and am not using them …

alzhao · 2016-05-27T12:05:56.000Z

~~Hi everyboad, after a deep investigation, I solved this problem.~~

~~Now both MT300A and MT300N can change mac address when used as sta and ap combined.~~

~~I will update the firmware asap.~~

alzhao · 2016-05-27T16:20:24.000Z

I tested and check the driver. Here is the thing.

Where there are multiple virtual interfaces, the wifi driver “rt28xx” only support minor (last 7 bit) change of the MAC address, compared to the permanent MAC address, which is loaded from flash when system start.

So you cannot change the MAC address freely when the wifi driver is loaded. The permanent MAC address is in mtd2. So if you compile your own firmware, you can keep this mtd partition unlocked. You can then change the mac address and write it back. Then reload the wifi driver.

jogl · 2016-05-27T19:56:23.000Z

It is already an improvement if it is possible to do minor changes to the MAC address that can cover some use cases, although some other cases are not covered as easily.

Some other thoughts:

If this is a driver limitation, would it not be theoretically possible to create a driver that changes this behavior (where it loads the MAC address from)? The question is if and how this could be done and how hard it is.
You say that is is possible to keep the mtd partition unlocked if we compile our own firmware. Why is it necessary to be locked in the first place? And wouldn't it be possible to create a firmware that unlocks it, changes the mac address and reload the driver in software only when it is needed (i.e. when one wants to change the MAC address)?