Make MACs Easier to Track

Hello-

I recently upgraded to the balance 305, and I am really digging the AP management portion. I have created two wireless networks, one for guests with captive portal, and one for trusted clients. For the trusted clients, I only allow wireless clients with a specified MAC to connect. However, I find that I am making a list of MAC addresses in the ‘Wireless Network -> Wireless Network Settings -> MAC Address List’ box which are both: a) difficult to remember who has what MAC, and b) already in the DHCP Reservation Table.

What would make things easier:

  1. In the “MAC Address List”, allow a string in quotations, to the right of a valid MAC, to allow me to keep track of MACs (e.g. 00:22:68:90:BE:7B “Bens Lenovo Laptop”).
    or

  2. Above the MAC Address list, have an option to “Allow access to MACs listed in DHCP Reservation Table”.
    or

  3. Consider a ‘big picture’ approach where a separate MAC table is made, I can map MACs to Users, then Users to Groups, and I can forget about trying to remember MACs at all. It would be sweet to be able to map common-named users to IPs in the DHCP reservation table; apply firewall rules to a group of users; and allow a group access to a specific wireless network…without typing out a bunch of MACs. Ambitious? Sure. But a hard-nosed approach to innovation didn’t get me buying your product.

Cheers-
Ben Adams

I am with you, Ben. 2. is what I immediately think of and 3. is what I am leaning towards as user group management/firewall rules and other MAC-related features come to mind.

Feature set is frozen for the upcoming 6.1 firmware release. We are planning to release a beta next week, and a production release a few weeks after. But if you like AP management, you will love firmware 6.1 - there are a number of new features on the WLAN controller. I was impressed when I first saw the new reporting charts, I am sure you will be too.

If you want to sneak a peep at 6.1, you can signup to the beta program at http://www.peplink.com/beta/.