Hello,
this is just an Idea. I run a bunch of OpenWRT APs on my house for good coverage. Problem is that I need to go through multiple APs to find where a particular device is connected. Also only the Router has the DHCP leases so all other do not know about hostnames or IPs.
My Idea is to have a special "page" on the router that queries not only ther router's host list and wifi list but also the wifi list for multiple configurable devices.
That's not really a centralized management but it solves the largest painpoint of it with minimal effort.
Let's be realistic, this may only happen if someone highly motivated (e.g. you) and skilled develops that feature and submits the patches - and even then it opens a huge can of worms in terms of security for the inter-node communication. It would probably not be trivial to convince reviewers to consider it safe enough to merge - or to even touch it with a ten foot pole.
Possible, yes.
Easy, no - not a side project for a rainy weekend (well, you may prototype it over that timespan, but security is the big issue that needs robust design and vetting).
Likely to happen, probably not - there are both lower hanging fruits and 'more important' tasks waiting for takers (both for the development and reviewing tasks).
Impossible, no - but it would need a convincing- and proactive development push (e.g. GSoC or bachelor/ master thesis) from a determined developer (you?!).
I was thinking that some lua-socket UDP-multicast-based daemon that joins a group, listens on a port, and also emits the (informational) data that it would like to see from others to that group/port, would be rather easy to prototype.
Add encryption (AES-ECB is only a few hundred lines of Lua, would have to go look for other/better modes) using a time-based key rotation scheme derived from a PSK to the mix, discard all incoming data that you cannot decrypt, and boom, there's your network-wide information sharing bus with some serious military grade security
Do not rely on lua for new OpenWrt/ Luci developments, it's being replaced (and only has a limited grace period left) in favour of client side javascript and ucode.
I had some deeper thoughts regarding this. My idea is to create an independent angular application that logs into several openwrt routers, fetches the data and combines it into one view.
The API can be ubus (documented in https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/5972215/TVzNHeej#154b5d84-4065-4887-a5a8-c1f3b51fe9a6).
CORS needs to be enabled and the angular application could simply be hosted on one of the routers.
I have hacked a small prototype today. It works quite well, except for one device that seems not to allow CORS. I try to release an initial version in the next weeks to gatehr some feedback.
