Purchase a mini q box

[Chodley]

@Rhonny I can see them as attached devices on my wifi mesh. As I mentioned in that post.

[nigea99]

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@Chodley wrote:

@Rhonny I can see them as attached devices on my wifi mesh. As I mentioned in that post.

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I refer you to my earlier answer - Yes. you will be able to see them on your network but they are not connected directly to it. 

They are connected to it via your Main box 

[Rhonny]

@Chodley 

The mini boxes get their IP address from your router via the main box, which is connected by wifi. So their IP address shows up in your connected devices - but they are not getting their feed directly through the air from your wifi. They are getting their feed directly through the air from the main box, which itself is connected to your wifi.

So the mini boxes are connected to your broadband, they are not connected to your wifi. 

[Chodley]

It's not their IP address, it's their MAC address.  I guess it's possible that it remembers those as source or destination from traffic that's passed through the Q box but that seems odd.

[Rhonny]

@Chodley

My connected device map on the router also shows each device as a MAC address. But each device also has an IP address assigned to it by the router.

You can't get a connected device that doesn't have both a MAC address (the fixed internal address of the device - its fixed name basically) and an IP address (a variable address assigned to it for a fixed period of time by the router).

The main Q box tells the router that it has a couple of mini boxes that need an IP address. The router asks the main box what each mini box's MAC address is, and then assigns an IP address to each MAC address, to allow the minis to receive and send data via the router's broadband connection.

A connected device list can show them as either all MAC addresses or all IP addresses.

[Chodley]

Hmm. Sure you need an IP address for everything.

I thought the Mac addresses were only visible on the physical link they were connected to (wifi vs sky q wifi vs ethernet in this case) but maybe this is my ignorance of networking. I guess it's a completely flat network across all 3, just bridged between physical media so everything still becomes aware of every other device's mac address. So what the mesh lists as connected devices includes things indirectly connected (as long as they're not routed). Makes sense.

[Rhonny]

@Chodley

Hmm. Sure you need an IP address for everything

Yes, you do need an IP address for everything. (To be clear I've not said otherwise.)

So what the mesh lists as connected devices includes things indirectly connected (as long as they're not routed).

I imagine as the mini boxes are connected to the main box, that this is why they are showing on your mesh, because the main box is responsible for them. The main box in your mesh has three IP addresses going into it - one that it keeps for itself, and two that it passes on to the mini boxes.