Discovered excessive latency issues/internet lag while gaming (I don’t game often and have never had issues in over 10 years).
Appears that the two V3 cams I have are the issue and I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that I discovered that each V3 has more than one mac address. One cam has FOUR MAC addresses?!? What the hell?!
I’ve been trying to resolve, and have fully reset the cams yet despite always starting with only one MAC address, within a day or so, it is always back up to 3-4 MAC addresses, each with it’s own router connection.
I’m no IT expert, & searching google, and these wyze forums, has been either fruitless (limited info), or way too different/off-topic. Can anyone offer a guy some enlightenment as to what is going on &/or a reasonable solution?
I have seen cameras with more than one MAC, but normally only one will be active at a time. However I have not noticed that in quite a while so I assumed that issue had been fixed with some firmware update. However that should not cause your latency issue unless your WiFi is running out of available connections. Most consumer grade WiFi access points are far more limited on connections than most people realize (20 to 40 connections is common). BTW, enterprise grade access points normally can handle far more - most of mine will handle 512 and a couple can handle 1024 connections).
The reason I ask is because I use a Network Scanning app that will group devices by their Device ID Code. I have not experienced any V3 cams with duplicate ID Codes, so those get listed individually and each has but one MAC. But, my OG Cams and Floodlight Pro cams get grouped together under the same ID and make it appear as one device with 2 MAC addresses and 2 IP addresses when in reality it is two devices that have the same Device ID Code.
Turns out it isn’t, in my case, a Wyze issue, but a router issue.
I had thought the connections might have been an issue too, so already confirmed my access point wasn’t the issue (lots of spare, & available, connections despite not having many to begin with). Removed most while troubleshooting.
As for the MAC list… taken directly from the router. And… you provided me with the insight needed. Turns out the router is grouping (or in this case identifying) different MAC addresses as/with the same device ID.
Thus the Wyze cam V3, iphones, chromebook, and a printer are all being identified as the single V3 cam. I’m thinking that the V3 was assigned an IP via DHCP &, after expiring, when it is refreshed/given another IP, the router is continuing to identify the old IP as the previous device (the V3) vs the current/proper device ID, but with the correct MAC address.
Now I’m understanding why the device management via MAC addresses hasn’t been wonky. I was taking the MAC addresses from the router list based off the router identifying a device id properly–which hasn’t been occurring!
Now to figure out why…
ps. & to also figure out the latency issue… hopefully something more than just being throttled by internet provider or bottlenecked by new customers in the area.
In my DHCP server (a function of my router), I have a DHCP reservation set for every Wyze camera. When a new camera is received (normally at my office), I remote into the router and build the reservation based on the MAC listed on the label of the camera. The Wyze cameras are assigned with an IP of 192.168.206.1xx where xx is the camera number.
Actually I believe it is a decent router. It does allow reserving based on the MAC address. However, doing so muddied the water but provided some insight into what is occurring & why.
I discovered our phones have a “private wi-fi address” option (came out in 2020; on by default). Each time they join the network, the phones are getting assigned new IP addresses–despite the actual MAC address having been given it’s own reserved IP address. This can be prevented by toggling off the private wi-fi address off.
Yet that is only part of the issue, as the router is also asscoiating/“device naming” old IP addresses (that had been previously used), as the same (previous) device name when a different MAC address/device is given the previously used IP address. Discovered this when the router was acting up and a full default reset was required to get it working again.
It has something to do with when DHCP assigned addresses are expired and later re-used by another device, as this also occurred when the v3 cam expired (MAC address wasn’t allocated a specific IP at the time) and was given a new IP address (after old/previous IP address was used by another device–which was then labelled as the same V3 cam despite being a different device).
Thus the issue is two-fold, partly to due with the ‘private wi-fi address’ option (now disabled) and also due to the router reusing device names (grouping?) despite different MAC addresses. Each should be recognized as different a device name (ie. V3 cam vs iphone) as at different times they are recognized as different (their correct device name), yet sometimes are not.
Now this likely seems the likely culprit for my latency issue, as I’ve been found some comments (on the web) that suspect concerns with routers having too many devices being logged into memory, due to the private wi-fi address smartphone feature creating havoc. Starting to test/troubleshoot now, hopefully by removing the V3 cam variable by assigning it’s own IP address based on it’s MAC address (with smartphone private wi-fi off, and another router reset).
Sorry all, this has become my “sounding board” to solve this. I appreciate everyones responses/thoughts on this as well!
Yes. Most mobile devices are defaulted to use a “Randomized” MAC so that the true MAC is never seen on a public network.
My router does this as well. I’m not sure what the IP release interval is set to, but my phone will have multiple instances of IP addresses still assigned to old MAC addresses and I am using DHCP. The rest of the devices with true MAC use seem to hold an IP for quite some time though.
My router uses the MAC address as the unique identifier rather than the Device Name sent from the device. That network scanning app I use does the opposite. For example, both of the Floodlight Pro’s I have are grouped by my app because the Device Name it uses from the device is LD_CFP.lan
One key modification I had to make on my last router was to turn off all Smart Connect, WiFi Fairness, Adaptive QoS (Quality of Service), Device Prioritization, Traffic Control… whatever they call the protocols in your specific router that will deprioritize devices because it thinks it is helping, but probably isn’t.
