R6400 - Device Name in Attached Devices vs LAN Setup?
On my LAN managed by an R6400 router, I assign static IP addresses to virtually everything. I want to KNOW what devices are on what IP. Using the LAN Setup page in the router's firmware I have done this for years. But something has always bothered me and I have never gotten around to inquiring until now.
During the setup of a static IP on the LAN Setup page, I enter a Device Name. I over-ride the default value shown (I am not always sure where this comes from but sometimes I know it is from the device itself) with something more meaningful. These values are accepted by the LAN Setup page and shown in the Device Name column there.
However, on the Attached Devices page, MANY (not all) of the device names I have entered are NOT SHOWN. Why is this?
And on some devices shown on the Attached Devices page have device names shown as -- (two dashes) and nothing else. Why is this? What does it mean?
Also, I can only very rarely "ping" any device by the name shown on the Attached Devices page. Of course, I can ping by the statically assigned IP address. So it is not that the device is blocking pings. It just seems that device name resolution is not happening in the router and this seems very strange to me. What is even more strange is that a few devices can be pinged by device name. So it appears to work in some cases.
All very strange... Can anyone clarify what is happening/not happening here? Thanks
Re: R6400 - Device Name in Attached Devices vs LAN Setup?
Static IP addresses are given to the device(s) itself, not on the router which are called "reserved IP addresses". DHCP does this. Do you really mean static or reserved IPs?
Which firmware version? (not "the latest", a number)
If Attatched Devices can't get a meaningful name from a device (eg, device returns nothing), it gives it a double dash
Re: R6400 - Device Name in Attached Devices vs LAN Setup?
Thanks microchip8!
You write: Static IP addresses are given to the device(s) itself, not on the router which are called "reserved IP addresses". DHCP does this. Do you really mean static or reserved IPs?
I may have my terminology a bit messed-up. In the router's admin pages, under Advanced->LAN Setup it calls it Address Reservation and this is under DHCP (which is enabled). This is what I am talking about. Sorry...
To me, this seems like assigning a static IP to a MAC address. None of these devices ever end up with some IP other than what I have specified here. I imagine that the router has a table of MAC addresses (along with the other info I have entered) and that when a DHCP request comes in from a given MAC, this table is consulted first and, if a matching MAC is found, the IP I have specified is returned/assigned. Perhaps nothing like this happens and I am all wet. But it sure seems this way.
Given the above imagining, it would seem like the device name I have given (so long as it conforms to hostname requirements) would be used by the router's DNS to resolve local hostname references (as in my ping requests). It appears to do this in some cases but does not in most. This inconsistent behavior is what I find confusing. If it simply did not ever work, I would have concluded that either I am an idiot (which remains quite possible) or that the router just does not do what I imagine it would be logical for it to do.
