Associated stations list in AP, how to show host names?

[Gruntruck]

Hi,

I have three "dumb AP's" running OpenWRT (and OpenWRT router as well). It works fine but I would love to be able to see host name in the list of associated stations when I log into AP. Currently, it only shows MAC addresses so I need to look up the list of MAC to know what the device is. Can I somehow configure AP to do DNS lookup for certain client MAC and also display the name?

Thanks!
P.S.
I have disabled dnsmasq, firewall and odhcpd in AP (as I do not need them)

[dazzsser]

i would also like to know how to do this

[n8b]

Since 19.07 update, Luci does not resolve MAC --> host from static leases

Hello, For devices being used as APs (no routing or DHCP), under OpenWrt 18.06 I was able to configure MAC address to host name associations in Network -> DHCP and DNS -> Static Leases. Devices associated to an AP would display the configured name in the Host column in Luci. After updating to 19.07, Luci no longer displays a name for associated devices, just a question mark (?). Any help in restoring this functionality is appreciated.

[Gruntruck]

OK, so as far as I understand only way to make list work is to hard-code MAC-to-host list in /etc/config/dhcp per each AP device, is this correct?

I was hoping it could somehow query the router for this...

[trendy]

First of all the dumbAPs need to use the router as DNS.
But that is not enough as the dumbAPs are not involved in any communication with the hosts, so they don't build their arp table with the necessary data.
Some similar topics:

Wireless Associated Stations - Hostname not shown

package network config interface 'loopback' option ifname 'lo' option proto 'static' option ipaddr '127.0.0.1' option netmask '255.0.0.0' config globals 'globals' option ula_prefix 'fdbc:465a:a93b::/48' config interface 'lan' option type 'bridge' option ifname 'eth0 eth1' option proto 'dhcp' config switch option name 'switch0' option reset '1' config interface 'lan6' option proto 'dhcpv6' option ifname '@lan' option reqaddress 'try' option reqprefix 'auto' uci: Entry not foun…

Second device not getting DNS entries from first device to show in Associated Stations

To do a nslookup, it should know the address first. But since it is a dumbAP, it doesn't participate in the dhcp packet exchange in any other way but forwarding the frames. Therefore it doesn't know addresses unless there is some way of communication. Check the packages arpwatch, addrwatch, and arp-scan. Maybe they can help in automatically adding new stations in the list correctly.

[smtylr]

Here's a simple way to solve this problem. Install fping and edit rc.local to fping each ip in the sub-net at startup. Means slightly slower boot-up...

Install fping

opkg update
opkg install fping

edit rc.local to include:

fping -g 192.168.1.0/24
exit 0

Works for me!

[trendy]

@smtylr

Means slightly slower boot-up...

Send it to background so that it won't delay boot.

[smtylr]

Very good point, Thanks.

[wired]

Any solutions when using multiple SSIDs/VLANs and the AP only has an IP on a single VLAN hence no arp? It needs a copy of the arp table from the router that knows about all these subnets

[patrog]

Hello All,

I was excited to find this solution with the tool "fping" (a few days ago) and I used it on my multiple AP nodes with the option -I in case I was handling multiple VLANs.

The interesting thing is that this workaround just appears to have stopped working in 19.07.5 and also in snapshot.

I suspect that changes in the following JS file is related to this behavior change but I could be wrong... Still trying to understand some of the details. See:

openwrt/luci

If anyone noticed this and can confirm, that would be appreciated. Thank you.

Patrice R.

[frollic]

Not a pretty workaround, but you can put your MACs in /etc/ethers, and distribute to all APs
It'll populate the client list with names for your devices.

This also means ethers have to be manually updated every time there's a new client.

Or might perhaps use fping to populate ethers, not running .5 thought

[tsonga]

smtylr's fping solution works for me too, thanks!