I recently realized I had a number of devices that supported WiFi 6, and did not have a WiFi 6 access point. Naturally, THIS COULD NOT STAND.

I bought this:

It’s a UniFi Access Point U6 LR,  and it’s obviously not in its final location at this point, but I needed to hook it up and test it.

The “LR” stands for Long Range, which means that I may be able to cover the entire house with a single access point, and also means that it requires a 30W PoE injector rather than the 15W PoE injectors I had already so I needed to spend even more money and then wait for the new one to arrive.

Fortunately, that didn’t take TOO long and the UniFi controller picked the new AP up as soon as it was connected to Ethernet, applied a firmware update and then adopted it into my network.

That’s when I looked at the list of WiFi clients, got vaguely annoyed that MOST of them were simply showing up as MAC addresses, and started trying to track them down and give them friendly names. This wasn’t a serious problem when it came to phones and computers, and even game systems make their MAC address reasonably easy to find. It got trickier when I was trying to label Google Nest speakers, but I eventually labeled all of those, and my Geeni smart plugs, and the TV…

…but there were still two devices showing up, identified only by their MAC address. To make things more frustrating, while MAC addresses are SUPPOSED to be registered to vendors, these ones weren’t coming up in any of my searches.

Moreover, both of them were connecting as WiFi 4 devices, which I thought meant that they were pretty old, but I changed my WiFi password not too long ago and that should have disconnected any older devices.

I fumed a bit and started turning things on to see if they were using a WiFi connection in standby. Still couldn’t find it. On the plus side, if and when I turn on either of our Vitas they now have friendly names assigned.

I even started unplugging things to see if I could get either device to disappear. No joy. I was starting to consider turning off circuits at the breaker panel.

I took a second look at the devices. One of them was staying resolutely connected to a single AP, but the other was roaming like crazy, switching between all three of my APs, almost as if

as if it were following me

I looked at my wrist. I looked at the UniFi controller. I turned off WiFi on my WATCH. Mystery Device #1 disappeared from the console. My wife was sitting in the living room reading something, and had beeen doing that for some time. I asked her to turn off WiFi on HER watch and Mystery Device #2 immediately disappeared as well.

So, I’m not going to say that was time particularly well-spent but now I will be able to look at the admin page for my Ubiquiti devices and know what every one of them is.  That’s something!

Also, Apple: please register the MAC addresses used by your watches with one of the applicable governing bodies.  When you get a spare minute.  Thanks.