NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
Unknown Devices
I have 27 devices on my system, many of which I cannot identify - they have dashes where the name should be, Unknown, and a whole series of Sonos speakers (the speakers are wired, but in various rooms). I understand that some will be connected to the satellite nearest to them but how can I narrow down and rename the devices they are connected to?
There are two parts to this problem (a) identifying the devices, and (b) defining them in the Attached Devices web page (or Orbi App?)
The first is easy, but tedious. Each device has a Media Access Control (MAC) address that is usually printed on the device label. It's a goofy number, such as 20:25:64:0E:1A:D2. (sometimes there are hyphens between the numbers rather tha colons.) After recording those with easy-to-find labels, the next (also tedious) step is turn them off, one at a time. The device that "disappears" is the one with that MAC address. It may take 5 minutes for a device to "drop off" the list. Orbi is thinking, "well, that device hasn't said anything for a while. Well, shucks, I'll just say it's not connected now until it comes back again. So, 27 devices == two hours maximum.
The hard part is that some Orbi firmware simply "doesn't work" in regard to describing devices. I would start with one device. Enter the information, click "Apply", and wait to see if it "takes". If it doesn't, then you have an awkward decision to make: to live with not knowing "what is what" or to risk doing a firmware update and hope that it fixes the device display and doesn't break anything else.
Sorry.
4 Replies
What model orbi system do you have?
What Firmware version is currently loaded?
There are two parts to this problem (a) identifying the devices, and (b) defining them in the Attached Devices web page (or Orbi App?)
The first is easy, but tedious. Each device has a Media Access Control (MAC) address that is usually printed on the device label. It's a goofy number, such as 20:25:64:0E:1A:D2. (sometimes there are hyphens between the numbers rather tha colons.) After recording those with easy-to-find labels, the next (also tedious) step is turn them off, one at a time. The device that "disappears" is the one with that MAC address. It may take 5 minutes for a device to "drop off" the list. Orbi is thinking, "well, that device hasn't said anything for a while. Well, shucks, I'll just say it's not connected now until it comes back again. So, 27 devices == two hours maximum.
The hard part is that some Orbi firmware simply "doesn't work" in regard to describing devices. I would start with one device. Enter the information, click "Apply", and wait to see if it "takes". If it doesn't, then you have an awkward decision to make: to live with not knowing "what is what" or to risk doing a firmware update and hope that it fixes the device display and doesn't break anything else.
Sorry.
