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My iPhone 13 does not display its name

My iPhone 13 does not display its name on ASUS RT-AX88U router. Name shows as Apple inc when connected to the 2.4GHz network and Anonymous when connected to 5GHz network. The MAC address on 5GHz is EE9CBC which may not be in Apple’s range thus the router referring to it as unknown. There are two iPhone 13 exhibiting this problem; however, the other eight Apple devices (mix of iPads and iPhones) in the home consistently display the name stored in them.


How can I resolve this issue?

Thank you.

iPhone 13, iOS 15

Posted on Sep 27, 2021 7:05 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 30, 2021 11:14 AM

It's not that the SSIDs are private but rather any device that has the Wi-Fi Private Address feature enabled for its Wi-FI connection will display as "anonymous" on your router and as this technology is used by more devices by both Apple and other vendors the ability to identify most devices via their MAC address will all but go away entirely.


In short, it's not a bug at all, it's the expected result of enhanced security.

9 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 30, 2021 11:14 AM in response to DROBPHOTO

It's not that the SSIDs are private but rather any device that has the Wi-Fi Private Address feature enabled for its Wi-FI connection will display as "anonymous" on your router and as this technology is used by more devices by both Apple and other vendors the ability to identify most devices via their MAC address will all but go away entirely.


In short, it's not a bug at all, it's the expected result of enhanced security.

Sep 28, 2021 8:26 AM in response to DROBPHOTO

Hello DROBPHOTO,


Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. We've reviewed your question and it looks like you want the device name to show up on the router as an identifiable name, rather than ‘unknown’. It's understandable that you'd want this resolved, so allow us to assist with that. Is the actual iPhone name set in Settings? Check these steps for directions: Change the name of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod using your computer. If yes, is the name just letters and/or numbers, or does it include special characters?


Please let us know and we can proceed. We're here for you. Have a fantastic day!

Sep 29, 2021 8:55 PM in response to DROBPHOTO

This is correct behavior and is because of the Wi-Fi Private Address feature of iOS/iPadOS/WatchOS.


In fact, the entire ability to be able to discern the vendor for a particular device by doing a vendor lookup on its MAC address is one that should not be counted on to work in the future.


Assuming "EE:9C:BC" are the first six octets of the MAC address, that is a valid local MAC address as specified by RFC 7042, which specifies bit 2 of the initial octet of the MAC address as the "local" bit.


This means for unicast addresses:


x2‑xxxxxxxxxx

x6‑xxxxxxxxxx

xA‑xxxxxxxxxx

xE‑xxxxxxxxxx


are all valid local MAC address ranges; for multicast, it's:


x3‑xxxxxxxxxx

x7‑xxxxxxxxxx

xB‑xxxxxxxxxx

xF‑xxxxxxxxxx


Therefore the router is doing the right thing in noting any device with a MAC address with bit 2 of the first octet set is "anonymous," as there is no way to work back from that address to what the actual device hardware address might be (which is the entire point of the Wi-Fi Private Address feature.)


I'm not sure why the router is identifying the 2.4 GHz vendor as "Apple, Inc.” though; does your router have multiple SSIDs and do you have Settings -> Wi-Fi -> (SSID) -> Private Address shut off for the 2.4 GHz network?


Regardless, what you see for the 5 GHz network is exactly what you should expect to see if Wi-Fi Private Address is enabled, and it appears your iPhone and router are operating properly.

Sep 29, 2021 1:34 PM in response to jdo_apple

Jdo_apple


The device names were copied over from the old iPhones; however, I changed the device name as you suggested. The new name consist of my initials eg XYZ-iphone. I have been observing the device on the network for the past 24 hours and there has not been any difference in behavior.

I restored the router to its factory state in an attempt to flush the routing table but the problem still persist.

After restarting the router, it indicated that it is loading the manufacturer information and subsequently the assigned client names for all attached devices except the two iPhone 13s are correctly displayed.


The iPhones 13 are running iOS 15.0, while all other Apple devices are running earlier OS versions.


At this point we are still at square one.


Thanks



Sep 29, 2021 4:03 PM in response to DROBPHOTO

We appreciate you getting back with us about this, DROBPHOTO. The steps you took were helpful to move towards narrowing down the source of this issue, so thanks for doing that test. The next step we advise would be to contact your ISP and request assistance with obtaining a firmware update for your router. Once that is complete, make sure to disconnect the test iPhone from the network, restart it, then reconnect to the network before checking to see if there was a change.


Please keep us in the loop and let us know how that works! Take care.

Oct 2, 2021 3:40 AM in response to DROBPHOTO

Sorry to interrupt a solved thread but iOS14 Private Address also defaulted to on. We spent a lot of time advising users with problems to turn it off. However updating could have turned on any private address options that had been turned off.

iOS 13 didn't have Private Address option as far as I remember.

My iPhone 13 does not display its name

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