Hostname not displayed for some devices

Router : Linksys WRT1900ACS
Firmware : 18.06.01

For of some of the clients I see hostname as just '?'. No actual name is displayed instead question mark is displayed. IP Address and Mac Address are shown correctly. Example below ( from UI of LUCI Active DHCP leases )

? 192.168.1.177 14:49:XX:XX:XX 10h 59m 16s

How do I know which device is this?. Is there any easy way to figure this out?

Hostnames in LuCI are either from DHCP leases or /etc/ethers (manually added). There is no requirement that a host provide a name when requesting a lease, nor that it accept one suggested by DHCP.

The first six hex "digits" are a manufacturer code. That can provide some insight.

Thanks. This means there is no easy way to figure our whether the all the clients connected to my home network are indeed genuine?. I do not want to use static leases for all.

Alas, yes

I just build up the list as new "devices of ours" show up on DHCP. It was annoying at start, but over the last couple years it's typically only a device or two at a time. I put the static leases in one range of the network, so, assuming nothing terribly nefarious is going on, I can easily "see" the dynamic-lease devices vs. the "known" (static) devices. (I don't bother with visitors, unless they're going to be here a while or reasonably often.)

A "MAC lookup" or "OUI lookup" site can help with device manufacturer. For example, "14:49:E0 SamsungE Samsung Electro-Mechanics(Thailand)", so probably a Samsung smart phone, TV, refrigerator, .... Sometimes it will be an unfamiliar name. In that case it may just be the wireless-component manufacturer, Foxconn, or someone a lot smaller.

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Thanks for the suggestions!. I think I will have to build a list of static leases. Will start working on that. I did the MAC lookup and found out that this MAC belongs to an old Samsung TV which gets turned on once in a while.

I am having the same situation, except funnily enough the client device is also running OpenWRT. Is there a way to force OpenWRT to provide it's hostname?

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