Nighthawk D8500 - Attached Devices page not showing all devices currently attached, Windows app does

[Magma25]

Nighthawk D8500 - Attached Devices page not showing all devices currently attached.

As an example: I'm looking at my router's "Netgear Genie" Basic page "Home". It says there are 7 devices connected. If I go to the Basic or Advanced "Attached Devices" page, there are only 6 listed. All 6 listed devices have been given custom names that differ from the ones communicated to the router by the device itself, in order to identify them easily. One item, a NAS, is connected by ethernet cable and it has a fixed IP address allocated to it. The others are all wireless and have dynamically allocated addresses.

If I open the Netgear Genie Windows application, it lists 7 connected devices as well. However, It actually shows 7 devices, which includes the device that is missing from the router's own Genie pages. If I turn off an item it remains on the list but goes grey and if I refresh the page then it disappears, so that's not the root of this discrepancy.

The one missing device is a WiFi-connected camera. It has a custom name set, just like the NAS. It has a fixed IP address, just like the NAS. However, it does not appear in the Attached Devices section. When it was set up, it ended up with a different custom name in the Attached Devices section than it did in the advanced LAN setup, but the LAN name was subsequently changed to match the other one. It still does not appear. When I furst connected it, it did appear on the list. Now it won't at all.

On occasions, some of the other connected devices disappear from the list, even if they actively using data across the router. They consistently appear correctly on the Windows app.

Any idea why this is happening and how I can fix it? I have firmware V1.0.3.28_1.0.1 which was the latest version up until very recently. The latest V1.0.3.29_1.0.1 has just "Security issue enhancement" as its release notes. It's going to be upgraded for safety, but I doubt that this could be expected to be a viable solution to this problem.

[TheEther]

In my experience, devices with static IP addresses will only appear in the Attached Devices section if the router "sees" traffic for those devices.  "Sees" is in quotes because traffic that stays local to the home network (i.e. goes from one LAN port to another) isn't seen by router.  Such traffic merely goes through the router's built-in switch.

I don't know how the Netgear Genie Windows application works, but it may be using another means to discover devices.

[Magma25]

That could explain it... The NAS with its static IP does have DDNS set up so it is synchronising with a provider out in the wider internet, while the camera is set up to only connect to the NAS across the local network. That doesn't help provide any solutions though... I wonder what the Windows app is doing differently?

[TheEther]

If the camera supports DHCP, then you can set up a DHCP reservation on the router.  This should solve your problem.

[Magma25]

By DHCP reservation, do you mean going to Advanced - Setup - LAN Setup, and then in the Address Reservation section adding the device with a specified IP address? Because that's how I set the camera to have a fixed address in the first place.

[TheEther]

Oh, I assumed that you were configuring the static IP address on the device itself.  This method doesn't use DHCP at all, which means one less piece of information for the router to see a device.

If you have an Address Reservation set up, then I believe the router should be displaying the camera as an Attached Device.  In order for this to work, however, your camera must use DHCP.  If you have, in fact, configured the IP address on the device, then that takes priority.  You should only use one method for each device: either an Address Reservation on the router or a static IP address on the camera.  Never both. 

[Magma25]

I've only told the router what addresses to give attached devices. I'm now having issues since the latest firmware update where the router eventually fails to respond to requests to connect to it directly (though it routes from device to device fine), and any attempt to access the Access Control page just makes the page hang. I have to reboot the router if I want to briefly access the other configuration pages, at which point the camera does occasionally show up on the attached devices list, but other devices don't appear. When I have a moment I'll have to roll back to the last firmware revision and try again.

[Magma25]

I've rolled back to firmware v1.0.3.28 so I can see the Access Control page again, and it does seem to show all attached devices there including the camera. So for example right now the Attached Devices page only shows 4 devices (This PC i'm typing on, the NAS, a TV, and a mobile phone) while the Access Control page shows 6 devices (those 4, plus the camera and another mobile phone). The phone on the list isn't being used, whereas the phone missing from the list is actively accessing internet data, so whatever makes them appear on the Attached Devices list doesn't seem to be whether the router is seeing them using internet data (especially as the Access Control page *can* see all attached devices properly regardless of whether data is flowing).

I think I'm just going to have to put up with the system as it stands, and rely on a combination of the Genie Windows app and the router's Access Control page to see what's going on, in the hope that this will be fixed by Netgear at some point in the future.