Hi all,

I seem to be having a rather strange problem since Ive upgraded to Virgin Media fibre where the virgin router thinks the unraid server has a different MAC address than it actually does.

I also upgraded my plex server from 6.9.2 to 7.1.4 and while everything seems to be in working order I dont get the IP address of the server listed in the top right of the dashboard header menu. A quick google says that this means theres a networking issue but I cant find where and am assuming that these are caused by the same issue?

The whole network is set to DHCP for IP and DNS. Everything shows up OK except the unraid server which fluctuates between the correct address and a different one.

The only other things I run on the network are two managed switches which also use DHCP from the server so everything should just work yet unraid or the router is doing something odd.

I have set reserved DHCP rules via MAC address (Virgin Router) for unraid and both switches.

Ive also noticed that the DNS the router gives to any network attached devices in the same DNS that the router uses for the internet instead of defaulting to the gateway address (usually the ip of the router) like every other router Ive ever used for the last 20 years.

Ive looked into the virgin hub 5x and they are not the best router in the world but since theyve disabled modem only mode I have to use it.

I have attached the server diagnostics zip file.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

unraid-diagnostics-20250819-1247.zip

Edited August 19, 2025Aug 19 by Oort

15 minutes ago, Oort said:

Ive also noticed that the DNS the router gives to any network attached devices in the same DNS that the router uses for the internet instead of defaulting to the gateway address (usually the ip of the router) like every other router Ive ever used for the last 20 years.

This does not mean a thing. A router CAN proxy a DNS request but is not forced to do it. (Actually no real router I am aware of does it. It just hands over the proposed DNS Addresses to the DHCP clients. There is no benefit in proxying it beside it also does some filtering like PIhole or something)

your logs show that your box requests an address, gets one but when it want to use it, some other device claims that it is using this address already.

This happens for EVERY address (counting them up from 210 to 250, did not check further).

This means there is something in your LAN that thinks it should be everybody.

Can be a broken device or a serious misconfiguration.

Try to unplug devices one by one and see if the problem goes away.

Can be also your new "router" which can be configured to support only a single (or a few) devices accourding to your contract.

Check the Virgin :-)

Thanks for the reply.

Only thing on the network that I wasnt able to configure was the cloudkey so Ive removed it completely.

I then shut down everything, clients, server, router and switches. Waited ten mins and then restarted the router and the switches. Then booted up a client PC and ran the ip scanner again.

It still lists Unraid on 192.168.0.250 with the incorrect MAC address and shows up an unknown connection on 192.168.0.237 which has the correct MAC address for the server.

The unraid server is set to be the browser master so could that be an issue with it fighting with the router? Theres nothing else on the network that deals with DNS or IP's . I have 3 desktops connected, a mobile phone, a CCTV box and occasionally connect a couple of laptops,. All set to auto DHCP and IP.

Its also impossible to change the IP address or DNS of the router.

4 minutes ago, Oort said:

Its also impossible to change the IP address or DNS of the router.

I guess you need to contact your ISP they should tell you how to configure that beast or what settings in the LAN you need to apply before it works.

Maybe it is "stealing MACs" trying to hide your machines to the net. Or something strange...

Give them a ring

Or, maybe, you do not have IPV4 anymore, just V6 with a stupid DSLITE Tunnel... this happens all over now.

Try to turn on IPV6 in UNRAID and the other boxes and see what happens

Edited August 19, 2025Aug 19 by MAM59

Have you ever spoken to virginmedia customer support? They are less than useless.

As a last attempt before I give in a waste an hour phoning a tech that doesnt know what theyre talking about. I tried removing the reserved address for the server in the router and changed all the links to my dockers to unraid.local instead of the direct IP address and its bloody worked! No more ghost IP's and connecting through file manager in windows happens immediately instead of it always taking 10 seconds.

So I think the issue is now fixed. Thanks for your help I doubt I would of thought to remove the reserved address without your advice.

2 hours ago, Oort said:

Have you ever spoken to virginmedia customer support? They are less than useless.

LOL, we have vodafone over here, I guess it is the same "quality" :-)

Anyway, nobody can know the special features or demands of a remotely (pre-)configured device.

So, nobody can help, only guess.

I guess I spoke to soon...

Removing the reserved address worked for about 7 hours and then it started acting up and producing spurious MAC addresses again.

After doing a lot of googling I came across a thread about unraid producing random mac addresses and according to that it was something to do with SHIM networks.

So, I checked the docker settings and sure enough for some reason 'Host access to custom networks' in the docker settings was enabled.

Once I turned this off, all my problems disappeared and no more ghost MAC's or IP's for nearly 2 days now.

Im fairly confident that this really is fixed now.