Apple devices Private Address

3rd December 2021

Private Address is an Apple setting that attempts to keep the user’s identity private by cycling the MAC/hardware address frequently, making the Layer2 connection hard to track. This setting is ON by default.

This causes problems when the DHCP lease time is set at a long duration, ie 8 days. Now imagine if you had 20 iPhones on the same network requesting a new IP address every 15 minutes.

Normal Solution:
create a guest network with a DHCP lease length of 15 minutes and get employees to use Guest for their iPhones. Assumes Email comes from Office365. This works until someone inevitably needs to Cast to a meeting room video display.

Alternate Solution:
For Work & Home networks; On your Apple device, go to Settings>WiFi>Tap on the blue (i) icon next to the WiFi network you’re trying to connect to, then turn off “Private Address”. Leave Private Address enabled for Public Wifi.