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R7800 is constantly (every 2 mins or so) reissuing IPs to 2 MAC addresses
The Nighthawk is constantly issuing the same IP address to two different MAC addresses at very short intervals - all night and all day long. I have the router configured to send the logs once per day and it only sends a log covering about an hour and a half (I guess it bit buckets the rest). See short sample log segment of IP reassignment below. Note there are other active devices (14 other devices - which jumps to 25-30 when all of the family is home) on these links that are not being treated this way.
Also note:
1. the log does not tell us if the device is on ethernet or on a wifi link.
2. Neither the log nor the dislay tells us which physical ethernet port a listed device is on
This IP address constant re-assignment issue has been going on for quite some time (since I got the router) and I cannot determine the cause. I also cannot identify any real diagnostic tools (such as a PCAP trace of any kind) avaliable in the Nighthawk that would allow me to do further troubleshooting. The existing canned displays in the web interface are cumbersome and frankly useless for troubleshooting. The reason is the displays are not lists, the window they are displayed in cannot be expanded or resized, the lists cannot be exported for comparison over time, and they are nothing but but pages of oversized icons. Since the router is constantly reassigning IPS as well as apparently having other changes (which do not appear to be logged) the graphical display is constantly changing faster than I can scroll through and make sense of it. The router also does not appear to have ANY error reporting for anything network wise so I cannot see if I have a bad eithernet link or jammed up wifi. If I could gain access to root and run some decent network utils (even a raw PCAP would be better than what I have now) that would be helpful in diagnosing these issues.
Please let me know your thoughts on how best to troubleshoot this kind of issue with this router.
[[DHCP IP: 192.168.1.8] to MAC address 50:32:37:88:8c:8c, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:23:11 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.10] to MAC address 50:32:37:89:48:3d, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:23:03 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.8] to MAC address 50:32:37:88:8c:8c, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:22:02 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.10] to MAC address 50:32:37:89:48:3d, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:21:50 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.8] to MAC address 50:32:37:88:8c:8c, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:20:53 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.10] to MAC address 50:32:37:89:48:3d, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:20:41 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.8] to MAC address 50:32:37:88:8c:8c, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:19:41 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.10] to MAC address 50:32:37:89:48:3d, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:19:28 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.8] to MAC address 50:32:37:88:8c:8c, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:18:29 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.10] to MAC address 50:32:37:89:48:3d, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:18:19 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.8] to MAC address 50:32:37:88:8c:8c, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:17:19 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.10] to MAC address 50:32:37:89:48:3d, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:17:07 [DHCP IP: 192.168.1.10] to MAC address 50:32:37:89:48:3d, Thursday, October 26, 2017 10:17:05
Re: R7800 is constantly (every 2 mins or so) reissuing IPs to 2 MAC addresses
Final thoughts...
One thging the "responder" said to me was particularly problematic. It was how he would find the devices and see why they are being DHCP pests. Clearly he must live in a world mostly populated by what I'll call systems. Systems such as PC's, maybe servers, high end cisco or juniper devices or similar very intelligent devices. "Systems" almost withput exception have logs, traces, and lots of reporting that is effective in giving clues about why they might be a "DHCP Pest". In the world I and most people live in - we live with internet connected devices that do not have or expose diagnostics of any kind at all. Devices like refrigerators, light bulbs, thermostats and the like, all on the network and part of the internet of things. These connected devices very often (much like the netgear routers) have ZERO management capability, zero logging, Zero diagnostics, and will not give a clue about why they are DHCP Pests. On top of that - the person that replyed to my post presumes that the devices are the DHCP Pests (he said - see why they are DHCP pests) when in fact there is nothing at all that indicates they are in fact the cause of the IP addressing problem. If this netger router had ANY of the reporting exposed that the underlying OS in that router is capable of providing from a network management perspective we wou;ld have better clues as to what is going on. Lastly he prefaces his comments that the router has a lot of firmware bugs so we should look elsewhere for the defect. It is precisely because of the bugs in the Netgear Router software that we should in fact look at the router first - where there is smoke there is fire. If we could look at the router(and we canot becasue there is nothing effective to look at) then we could perhaps in fact rule out the router.
The person that posted should have presumed that I have already identified (and I did) and checked (which I did) the devices that we getting (and are still getting) re-IP'd constantly. I even whent so far as to buy new replacement devices - and the new ones are getting re-ip'd as well.
Anyway - without some kind of diagnostic tools of some kind (and I cannot afford to go buy a hardware sniffer) I will eventually replace the Netgear Router with a router with fewer bugs and better repoorting\diagnostics. At least I'll get a router that would allow mirroring so I can learn something about the root cause of the constant IP re-issue if it exists after I trash the netgear nighthawk.
Re: R7800 is constantly (every 2 mins or so) reissuing IPs to 2 MAC addresses
> The Nighthawk is constantly issuing the same IP address to two > different MAC addresses at very short intervals [...]
That might better be phrased as "repeatedly issuing the same IP address to a device", and "this happens for two different devices". It doesn't seem to be "issuing the same IP address to two different MAC addresses", which would be a more serious problem. As I read that log excerpt, each device is getting the same IP address every time, which is a good thing.
I know nothing, but if these devices are repeatedly broadcasting DHCP requests, then I would not be amazed if the DHCP server in the router were responding to those requests. These routers seem not to offer a way for the user to adjust the DHCP lease time, so it seems unlikely that yours is issuing 1-minute leases to these particular clients (only).
> [...] other active devices (14 other devices - which jumps to 25-30 > when all of the family is home) on these links that are not being > treated this way.
Because they're not pestering the router with repeated DHCP requests? I'd be trying to determine what these devices are, and why they're being such DHCP pests, rather than trying to find fault with the router. (There is no shortage of firmware bugs on these routers, but it's not immediately obvious that the router's to blame in this case.)
> 1. the log does not tell us [...]
The DHCP server, in order to do its job, might neither know nor care.
> [...] the graphical display is constantly changing faster than I can > scroll through [...]
Tell your browser to save the page, and look at it later?
> If I could gain access to root and run some decent network utils [...]
No bets on the tools available, but you might be able to get access to a command-line (shell) interface using one of the Netgear Telnet Enable programs floating around out there (I use the one which I've modified: http://antinode.info/nte ).
Re: R7800 is constantly (every 2 mins or so) reissuing IPs to 2 MAC addresses
I received one reply which was mostly making statements about how poorly I worded the issue I was asking for help on. Then the reply also said nothing of value with respect to the issue. It is frustrating that these problems exist with the Netgear solutions.
Re: R7800 is constantly (every 2 mins or so) reissuing IPs to 2 MAC addresses
Final thoughts...
One thging the "responder" said to me was particularly problematic. It was how he would find the devices and see why they are being DHCP pests. Clearly he must live in a world mostly populated by what I'll call systems. Systems such as PC's, maybe servers, high end cisco or juniper devices or similar very intelligent devices. "Systems" almost withput exception have logs, traces, and lots of reporting that is effective in giving clues about why they might be a "DHCP Pest". In the world I and most people live in - we live with internet connected devices that do not have or expose diagnostics of any kind at all. Devices like refrigerators, light bulbs, thermostats and the like, all on the network and part of the internet of things. These connected devices very often (much like the netgear routers) have ZERO management capability, zero logging, Zero diagnostics, and will not give a clue about why they are DHCP Pests. On top of that - the person that replyed to my post presumes that the devices are the DHCP Pests (he said - see why they are DHCP pests) when in fact there is nothing at all that indicates they are in fact the cause of the IP addressing problem. If this netger router had ANY of the reporting exposed that the underlying OS in that router is capable of providing from a network management perspective we wou;ld have better clues as to what is going on. Lastly he prefaces his comments that the router has a lot of firmware bugs so we should look elsewhere for the defect. It is precisely because of the bugs in the Netgear Router software that we should in fact look at the router first - where there is smoke there is fire. If we could look at the router(and we canot becasue there is nothing effective to look at) then we could perhaps in fact rule out the router.
The person that posted should have presumed that I have already identified (and I did) and checked (which I did) the devices that we getting (and are still getting) re-IP'd constantly. I even whent so far as to buy new replacement devices - and the new ones are getting re-ip'd as well.
Anyway - without some kind of diagnostic tools of some kind (and I cannot afford to go buy a hardware sniffer) I will eventually replace the Netgear Router with a router with fewer bugs and better repoorting\diagnostics. At least I'll get a router that would allow mirroring so I can learn something about the root cause of the constant IP re-issue if it exists after I trash the netgear nighthawk.
