Using separate DHCP/DNS server, getting Unnamed Device in Device manager

[JerkyChew]

Hi,

I set up my NightHawk XR700 as my only wifi router, and have offloaded the DHCP and DNS duties to a Windows server. All the systems on my network show up as Unnamed Device. If I click details it shows their IP addresses. I assume that this is because my router doesn't know how to look up the IPs? Is there a way to point the Netgear to my internal DNS server to reverse resolve the IPs? Or am I wrong and this should "just work"? I've updated my router to the most recent firmware.

[Netduma Fraser]

Hey, welcome to the forum!

It's probably that the device names are not making it through the server to the router as they normally would. May be interrupting ARP as well so can't look up the MAC addresses properly, I'm just speculating as I've not encountered it before and would work letting the router take care of it. Closest thing to what you want to do may be to use Dynamic DNS.

[JerkyChew]

The MAC addresses show up accurately in the network manager table. I have an Active Directory domain at my house and there are a ton of dependencies that would break if I were to move DHCP and DNS onto the router. Can you give more information on how dynamic DNS would work in my situation? I've only ever used it to get a hostname on my external IP address.

Oh, one more thing - A ton of the clients are wireless and are connected directly to the router, so I'd think that if the ARP table were the issue, they wouldn't be affected?

[Netduma Fraser]

Actually looking at it further you've have to create your own DNS service and I don't think you'd be able to point the router to it.

I'm just speculating that by not using the DHCP/DNS on the router that it doesn't process those requests properly, I'm just speculating, I'm not a developer. How are they getting an IP from the router though, still through your server?

Given you said it's not possible to switch to the router handling it, I'd just suggest you match the IP/MAC addresses on the router with the devices and rename them

[JerkyChew]

Hi,

They're getting their IPs from my DHCP server which is a Windows VM on my network.

I've started manually naming everything - Is it safe to assume that DumaOS uses the MAC addresses for name matching and not IPs? Because if it uses IP addresses this will turn into mass chaos as my leases expire and renew.

[Netduma Jack]

13 hours ago, JerkyChew said:

Hi,

They're getting their IPs from my DHCP server which is a Windows VM on my network.

I've started manually naming everything - Is it safe to assume that DumaOS uses the MAC addresses for name matching and not IPs? Because if it uses IP addresses this will turn into mass chaos as my leases expire and renew.

Hi, welcome to the forum! Yep that's right, it's using Mac addresses. Sometimes it can categorise them incorrectly (so it might say a Laptop is a Desktop or somethin'). That's why we've let you change the device type manually.

[display name]

fyi - I struggled with similar issues related to DNS. I been trying to configure a pihole ( https://pi-hole.net ) for network-wide ad blocking. It's essentially a private DNS server.

It seems, from the netgear support forum https://community.netgear.com/t5/Idea-Exchange-For-Home/Additional-DNS-support/idc-p/1694961#M2096, that some (all?) of their routers -- like the XRxxx series, use a "post-NAT" DNS relay which means the DNS only knows the gateway is making the request.