Hello,

I have a draytek 2866 router with firmware 4.3.2.1 installed. Does anyone know why when devices are connected to any of the Lan's configured, only a few of the devices will have their names shown within the dashboard? This is the same for devices such as phones, smart watches etc. At the very least, only the MAC Address and IP Address for the devices will be shown. The Host ID field will be blank.

Many thanks

Notorious

I don't know if you can. I've never been able to work it out myself. I presume the reason why some are showing their names is to do with security, including the randomisation of Mac addresses of some devices and also dynamic address assignment on the internal network.

Some routers allow you to assign specific names like my Fritzbox, for example, but in such cases you'd also need to assign a fixed address on your network.

Notoriousbig wrote:
I have a draytek 2866 router with firmware 4.3.2.1 installed. Does anyone know why when devices are connected to any of the Lan's configured, only a few of the devices will have their names shown within the dashboard?

I've noticed this with other Routers (Draytek and others). I've always assumed (but never confirmed), that it's information supplied by some DHCP clients to the DHCP Server. I can't quite spot which DHCP message this information would be conveyed in ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Host_Configuration_Protocol

Notoriousbig wrote:
Hello,

I have a draytek 2866 router with firmware 4.3.2.1 installed. Does anyone know why when devices are connected to any of the Lan's configured, only a few of the devices will have their names shown within the dashboard? This is the same for devices such as phones, smart watches etc. At the very least, only the MAC Address and IP Address for the devices will be shown. The Host ID field will be blank.

My partial solution to this issue is to use LAN DNS. (https://www.draytek.co.uk/support/guides/kb-lan-dns). For all my infrastructure hardware (servers, printers, etc), I configured DHCP to issue fixed IP addresses. Then I assign LAN DNS entries to each of those hosts which allows me to refer to host names rather that IP addresses. I also give names to each fixed IP address to that they will show up as named when using Diagnostics > DHCP Table. This does not solve the issue for mobile devices or IoT which are I am loathed to grant fixed addresses to. The problem with iOS devices is that Apple's security will not allow the netbios device name to be shown,

Still the Draytek works better than my old Sky ER115 router!