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Forum Discussion
RS500 connected devices list doesn't match nighthawk and home assistant apps
Nighthawk app and Home Assistant app with Netgear integration don't read the full list of connected devices even though the 192.168.1.1 router admin portal shows the full list of connected devices. I have two phones that do not show up on the list in either app, but do show up on the list in the router admin portal. The only workaround is to reboot the RS500 router which properly syncs the full list of connected devices across apps but within 1-2 weeks the list becomes desynchronized again. This causes my home automation to fail as it relies on my phones being discovered on the WiFi network for presence detection when I am home and connected to the router. My router firmware version is v1.0.5.22. Since both home assistant and nighthawk apps are failing to read the full device list at the same time, I believe this is a router firmware issue or REST API cloud/server endpoint issue (ARP cache issue?). Home assistant uses the Netgear API via Python on a raspberry pi server connected directly via Ethernet to the router, I'd assume the nighthawk app uses a similar mechanism to retrieve the connected device list. Hoping this can be escalated to the Netgear engineering team. Best regards.
7 Replies
I've contacted technical support several times over the past month and restarted phones, reinstalled apps, all of the standard procedures. MAC randomization is turned off on both phones (device MAC only). The problem occurs intermittently. Smart connect is enabled. The phones are Android and iPhone. I do believe this is a firmware issue.
Keep in contact with NG support thur your case number.
Hi furry, I've spent a generous amount of time on the phone with technical support over the past month. Netgear needs to revise their policies to allow for escalation to the engineering team sooner without burdening the consumer so much with multiple repetitive diagnostic sessions, screenshots, follow up calls, etc. Especially when it is clearly not an issue on my end. Most consumers will give up at this point and the problems in Netgear's hardware will never get resolved. Engineering's job is to diagnose/debug/fix these issues. They are paid to do this, I am not, I'm asking that my time be honored. It is poor user experience to get an expensive new router, report an issue with it, and be forced to go through an extensive beaurecratic process, and receive dismissive comments such as "keep in contact". I realize Netgear may want to prevent engineer burnout, but I am also burnt out. Engineering needs to fix this issue, it is a basic function of the router to report the list of connected devices, I cannot expend further energy on this.
You'll need to ask the support people to elscalate this as well. All this is beyond forum help when it comes to FW and fixes that may need to be implemented.
Use can and should use the bug reporting feature in the NH app to help report and fasilitate notifying NG of issues see by users: How do I submit a bug report or logs from the Nighthawk or Orbi app? | NETGEAR Communities
Good luck.
Do both of these phones have assigned IP addresses in the RS500 LAN Setup?
On a (very) side note, there are some tools that people have written to access Netgear's (undocumented) router SOAP interface.
It appears you are familiar with Python, so it might be interesting to see if this program works with your RS500:
It might be entertaining to see if this Python program works with your RS500:
# get_dev.py Python program to retrieve attached devices list from Netgear router # # Requires Python library "Requests". See https://pypi.org/project/requests/ for installation instructions # # requests==2.25.1 import requests from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth # urllib3==1.26.3 import urllib3 import json # Define the IP of the router, admin user name (typically "admin"), and the admin password. router_ip = '192.168.1.1' admin_user = "admin" admin_password = "Enter admin password here" def get_connected_devices(url, admin, passwd): r = requests.get(url, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(admin, passwd), verify=False) devices = r.text.splitlines()[1][7:] return r.status_code, devices if __name__ == '__main__': print('STATUS: Starting execution.') urllib3.disable_warnings() # Preparing to call get_connected_devices # IP address for the Orbi router # URL to query connected devices router_url = 'https://'+router_ip+'/DEV_device_info.htm' http_response, devices_text = get_connected_devices(router_url, admin_user, admin_password) print("HTTP response ",http_response) # The Netgear router sometimes does not honor the request and returns 401 # just try again and will succeed eventually if http_response != 200 : if http_response == 401 : print ("This happens sometimes. Please run program again") exit else : print(f'ERROR: Failed to retrieve devices from router: response code {http_response}.') print('ERROR: Verify settings and hardware.') else: print('SUCCESS: Devices connected to router:') print(json.dumps(json.loads(devices_text), sort_keys=True, indent=4)) print('STATUS: Finished execution.')
