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Device Manager very confused with switched devices


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Since I don't need my WRT1900AC anymore, I put that device in wireless bridge mode. Meaning that it would connect to my XR500 via wireless, and bridge the connection out on the WRT1900AC ethernet switch port for which I have all of my entertainment unit devices connected, such as my SmartTV, IPTV boxes, PS3, PS4.

I think this confuses the device manager deeply since it's tracking MAC addresses, so you get items like this happening. You also get some very weird activity logs.

 

devices.PNG

logs.PNG

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Yes the device manager tracks using MAC addresses, which does present a problem in this scenario. The Linksys isn't sending DumaOS any information on MAC addresses, so I think this is something you'll need to configure on the Linksys.

I've seen in the past that some wireless bridges allow you to forward the MAC addresses. I don't know if your Linksys has any options like that, and I don't have access to one to investigate.

Essentially though this isn't really DumaOS's fault, it doesn't have enough information to work with. If your gaming device was connected directly to the XR500, you could prioritize it and then blanket throttle everything on the bridge's MAC address. Having your primary devices on the bridge does present a problem but i'm not sure what can be done.

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I wouldn't suggest trying to find issues within the logs, it is very verbose and aimed at developers which means it can look like issues are occurring when its simply background processes. If DHCP was changing IPs that often you would definitely know about it. 

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40 minutes ago, gisuck said:

so.... not a broadcast storm?

Not sure what you mean exactly.

The devices connected to the bridge I assume they’re not showing up as individual devices is that right? If so it kind of makes sense that all these IPs are showing, do they represent the devices connected?

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13 hours ago, Netduma Alex said:

Yes the device manager tracks using MAC addresses, which does present a problem in this scenario. The Linksys isn't sending DumaOS any information on MAC addresses, so I think this is something you'll need to configure on the Linksys.

I've seen in the past that some wireless bridges allow you to forward the MAC addresses. I don't know if your Linksys has any options like that, and I don't have access to one to investigate.

Essentially though this isn't really DumaOS's fault, it doesn't have enough information to work with. If your gaming device was connected directly to the XR500, you could prioritize it and then blanket throttle everything on the bridge's MAC address. Having your primary devices on the bridge does present a problem but i'm not sure what can be done.

It doesn't look like Linksys does MAC address forwarding from it's switching hardware. At least, I don't see a visible configuration to do so.

4 hours ago, Sunaikinti said:

I would say your ps4 shouldn't have 3 ips for wired and wireless. Definitely screwing up port forwarding. I say something is wrong.

I'm pretty sure that this would be the MAC address of the WRT1900AC in wireless bridge mode.  Basically the WRT1900AC is connecting to the XR500 via wireless, and then acting as a hardware switch on the WRT1900AC ethernet ports. Technically, there should only be 5 IP addresses used here. 1 for the WRT1900AC itself, and the 4 for the devices used on the ethernet ports. Not too sure why 7 IP addresses are in use here.

It's possible that one of the devices did a DHCP renewal, but did not put in it's last used IP address as part of the request. In which case, the XR500 would offer a new IP address in which case the other IPs are stale.

4 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Not sure what you mean exactly.

The devices connected to the bridge I assume they’re not showing up as individual devices is that right? If so it kind of makes sense that all these IPs are showing, do they represent the devices connected?

Well, if you look at the logs screenshot, you'd see there's a lot of DHCP traffic within seconds of each other. DHCP challenges are done in layer 2 broadcast ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff creating a very slow broadcast storm.

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14 hours ago, Netduma Alex said:

Yes the device manager tracks using MAC addresses, which does present a problem in this scenario. The Linksys isn't sending DumaOS any information on MAC addresses, so I think this is something you'll need to configure on the Linksys.

I've seen in the past that some wireless bridges allow you to forward the MAC addresses. I don't know if your Linksys has any options like that, and I don't have access to one to investigate.

Essentially though this isn't really DumaOS's fault, it doesn't have enough information to work with. If your gaming device was connected directly to the XR500, you could prioritize it and then blanket throttle everything on the bridge's MAC address. Having your primary devices on the bridge does present a problem but i'm not sure what can be done.

Just wondering why it would need to track a device at layer 2 since all the juicy stuff that DumaOS would be doing is at layer 3 and up. Can you not just track the device by IP only? All the port forwarding and stuff would be layer 3. Layer 2 wouldn't leave the network for the XR500 anyways.

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Hmm, well the MAC address is a unique identifier. Doing it via IP address would cause confusion when it was reassigned. Maybe if everything was using a static ip?

The MAC address is also one of the things that's used to identify a device type.

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13 hours ago, Netduma Alex said:

The MAC address is also one of the things that's used to identify a device type.

As far as I know, all you can do is identify the vendor, not the device type, by the MAC address. The vendor would get a unique ID on the first 6 characters. Tracking by MAC address isn't a bad thing until you put a switch between you and the destination device. That's why I thought IP tracking would be better.

Just thought I put that out there.

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