it may even be part of DHCP reservation list, e.g. "with unfilled IP address" or some similar form - main thing is to make clear to admin which stations are really connected

  @Filip009 

 

well, if we are in some political party forum, I 'd be gladly blaming someone or something that it does not correspond to my dreams

 

however, we are technical forum here

 

note, the suggested DB does not even "solve" the "if unknown" issue, but rather solves "once found, easy to maintain", in another words "needs pen and paper" issue

 

this means, the reality is, I have full house of devices whose hostname cannot be changed, the dream "I wish it would not be so"  is a dream only

 

and I as admin would have much easier life, if the "DHCP device" were able to maintain such a database and showed it seamlessly

 

do you try to tell me that privacy is the reason why it is not present at the router and it is intentionally not there ?

 

  @Clive_A 

soory, I maybe was not quite clear

in fact I was having feature request

 

it means, I never would suggest to "rename" or change something at client side - it does not technically have any sense

 

I rather manage house full of devices, many ar IP cameras, robotic things, gaming whatever console, chinese whatever gadgets among normal Windows/Android devices.

 

MAC address is somethigng that "never" changes. I mean if you really want you can fake it at some device but that is not my point at all.

 

And when I troubleshoot newtwork or want to see which devices are there, I often see a list of some weird names and spend useless time to search my MAC db somewhere else to find out who it is.

 

You are right, technically, it is "trusted" network in sense who else got there.

Even recently with my old device I even were not able to separate guests into different subnet, which now solves many issues.

Even now, I have not finished migrating these devices into separate network which they shall be in properly.

 

But still. It seems to me obvious that such a feature "must" be there like I am surprised noone ever did not need it. Because MAC is what determines "what" the device  is.

 

Example: my internet seemed terribly slow. It may be uplink was slow. But it may be some device took too much bandwith. I checked the IP stats and tried to find the devices. Life would be a bit easiser with suggested mini-db.

 

Have a nice day

  @Filip009 

Hi Clive_A,

I read your response several times and I do not quite understand the reasoning

1. Quite often it is really not possible or easy to change hostname with many devices (not PCa and phones)

2. Quite often each user is admin of his own device and is able to change the hostname and really does it unpredictably

3. Quite often, if there is IT guy, his goals may be different than Network's guy

 

What I meant, of course, was not to remove real hostname.

Neither touch it in any sense.

What I meant was add something like "MAC address name" and show it seamlessly e.g. in DHCP lease column. I may have had confusing explanation.

 

There is anyway a db of MAC-IP reservations - one possibility is to use it more widely in this sense. Another technical option would be separate small db.

 

I realize how "not easy" to implement it is to be real production code. Every code you introduce may complicate to maintain it in the future. When requesting, I was rather sceptical and I was expecting not to be implemented. I was however wondering that never anyone mentioned this as useful so far.

 

Regarding your question about which brand has this feature, to be honest I do not know. I had some trainings regarding cisco, aruba, HP networking devices (3com, Procurve). Maybe even none of them. I do not remember. I was describing my need I have over years of managing small home network.

 

Managing small business network may pose slightly different challenges. Maybe less IOT or similar weird devices and more control over real hostnames. But still this may be useful.

For example, by assigning certain strings to certain MACs, net guy can observe some pattern in DHCP leases and decide to move all laptops to another subnet after some time they grow in number. Or similar.

 

 

I realize I have for example some chinese IP cams. They are extremely difficult and unprofessional in terms of how to even connect to them. I have maybe unique situation because I like to try different  cheap noname cameras and from networking point they are hell bad to manage.

Often rely on some chinese cloud. Often have weird hostnames. And to be able to see them in DHCP list  which one is which would be great when I troubleshoot if one fails which is outside for example when it freezes outside and I need to look at connectivity level. If you buy 20 IP cams from single vendor, then you perhaps use vendor's tool to scan and assign IPs. But the budget is elsewhere.

 

But generally this is something that I feel for years that I miss at the DHCP side and I wonder

   "one day, cars will fly"

and

"one day, producers of switches enable to give MAC names". 

 

Cars do not fly yet.

Maybe I will die without seeing both :-)