Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?
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@JKnott Thank you. I wasn't really thinking to give it a static IP, I just wanted to give it a description to make it easier to identify in the DHCP lease list. Seems like in order to do this it has to have a static IP?
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@johnpoz I didn't assign an IP, just a description. That made 2 entries in the DHCP lease list, like the OP saw (and you also). You mentioned adding a hostname so I did that and it also creates 2 entries. This was a couple years ago so I was hoping that it had been addressed.
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@terryzb I never understand why you would not assign an IP to a reservation? If your going to go to the trouble of setting a reservation - put in a name and IP.. Some devices do not send a name..
Here I had updated one of my alexa's awhile back - and never got around to setting its IP in a reservation. So I just did.. And now it has the IP and name I want it to have, and the other lease is gone..
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@johnpoz To answer your question about not assigning an IP, I guess my thought process is that I'm not really trying to change the DHCP behavior by making a static reservation, just trying to add a friendly name in the UI associated with the MAC address.
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@terryzb Let me try and duplicate what your doing..
So you want to set a reservation that doesn't assign an IP, so the IP is just pulled from the pool but the name is there for clients that do not send a name. I have never done that - I always assign a IP to clients I am setting a reservation for. I just personally see no point to not doing that.
To me the whole point of reservation is setting an IP..
I also know a new dhcp server is coming.. in some upcoming release, since the current isc dhcp is eol.. I believe they are moving to kea
Is there a feature request for this - I would have to look, but prob be good idea to put it in so it might be included when they move to the new dhcp server.
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@terryzb said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:
@johnpoz
about 10 hours ago@JKnott Thank you. I wasn't really thinking to give it a static IP, I just wanted to give it a description to make it easier to identify in the DHCP lease list. Seems like in order to do this it has to have a static IP?
What else are you going to assign the name to?
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@terryzb said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:
just trying to add a friendly name in the UI associated with the MAC address.
That I assume^
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@stephenw10 said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:
That I assume^
What's the point of assigning a name to a MAC instead of an IP address or not assigning an IP to a MAC? On my network, every device that "lives" here has a static mapped IP address with a name assigned. I also have a pool of unassigned addresses for any visiting device, though they would only be on my guest WiFi/VLAN.
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@JKnott I really don't get it either ;) If I am going to take the trouble to make sure something has a name I lookup up somewhere, why would I not just give it an IP.. So I know device X is at 192.168.1.100 or whatever and if dns fails, I can still access known device by its IP, etc.
But hey - the wireless controller for unifi allows to create an ailas "name" for some device based on the mac address.
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I can see how it would be useful. I haven't memorised the MAC address of every device on my network.
I just don't think it's possible in pfSense currently. -
@joyjit said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:
When I create a static IP mapping without any IP Address, it shows up only once, with the friendly hotsname I assigned, in the DHCP Leases page.
@stephenw10 said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:
Either that it allows you create a mapping without an IP address (and without static ARP
FWIW...I recently created DCHP a static mapping (v23.01/23.05) and didn't have any issue; however, in my case, I used an IP and a real domain name. I cannot show because I had to get rid of Dell Precision 3630MT...coffee lake issues for another Dell Precision 5820 with Xeon...got graphic card and memory arriving tomorrow, and should be up this week.
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@stephenw10 Thank you Stephen. I apologize that I didn't articulate my question well enough. I was just echoing what the OP asked for a few years ago in the first post and wondered if there was now a way to do it. I appreciate you confirming that it doesn't appear to be possible in pfSense yet.
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Johnpoz I see your point of just assigning a static ip if your going to go through the trouble of creating a host name.
However the fact of the matter is that all soho routers that I have used (ubiquiti,netgear,tplink, probably others) have this feature. Essentially what we are able to do on those routers is quickly within a few clicks rename a device in the client lists. (I.e. click client list/dhcp lease table, click the device , edit device name, done). It makes it quick and easy to monitor devices on a home network. Just like DHCP is quick and easy. I have absolutely no need to have a static ip on some devices like a kids iPad, etc. Or want to take the time figure out which Ip I want to assign/record to said device.
Maybe the new DHCP backend will have this from the getgo.
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@Dadman said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:
Essentially what we are able to do on those routers is quickly within a few clicks rename a device in the client lists.
I'm doing just that with with pfSense since ... a decade or so ?
I'm not touching the LAN network devices. They all stay on the default DHCP client mode.
On the pfSense side : I see the MAC of the client, assign it a IP, give it a more clear host name like 'NAS2' so I don't have to deal with (example) :
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Hey all! This is an old thread, but it looks like it's still going even as of a couple months ago, so I hope it's ok I continue the discussion here rather than starting a new topic (please let me know otherwise)
I just got a netgate 1100, and after I got it all set up, one of the first things I wanted to do was create a description or a friendly name for all of my devices on the network, lol. I'm surprised that this seems like such a difficult task with how powerful/flexible/customizable pfSense is!
To be clear, the end goal (for me) is NOT to set a reservation or a static IP. If I have to do that for every device in my network then there isn't any point in running a DHCP server in the first place. I have a handful of devices that I need to have a static IP, but for everything else I want them to be given an IP from the DHCP pool.
That said, many of the devices don't seem to provide a host name, so I don't know what they are or who they belong to. I need a way, whether it be creating a reservation or some other way, to set an identifier (probably at the MAC address level) so I can quickly and easily identify the device. This is helpful when creating aliases to set rules and schedules for my children's devices, as an example, since I have to use a host name or IP (it would be great if I could use MAC addresses here too).
Or, if there is some other way I should be doing this, please let me know. Essentially I want to group my devices by the person they belong to so that I can create rules and schedules for those groups of devices. Currently I can't seem to do that without assigning a static IP to all of them, which I'd rather not do.
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So effectively add an alias for a MAC address? Hmm
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@stephenw10 I thought if you just left the IP black when you setup a reservation it just pulled from the pool for the IP? Hasn't there been multiple threads about this? This is what the note says on the IP when creating a reservation
I just never understood this thinking.. If I am going to go through the trouble of setting hostname based on mac - just put in an IP as well.. What is that .2 seconds more of work?
You could even set it up before hand and just load it into your xml file, thought I saw some work someone did that would convert spreadsheet into the xml you need.
Not sure if this is the one I was thinking of, but this should be able to convert a list of your stuff you want into xml to load in
https://github.com/GeekVisit/uprootSeems like they don't understand the point of dhcp to be honest.. There is more than an IP you can do with dhcp.. So vs settings static on the device it is much better to set a reservation.. You can change this whole network to some other IP scheme without having to touch a device, you can change dns as well. What gateway it points to, etc.
I don't think I have anything on my network currently that doesn't have a reservation with IP in it.. When I add something new, I just let it grab something from the pool, then go in and create a reservation for it - next time it up updates its lease it gets the new IP, or if I want it to take effect right away I just reboot the device or manually renew its lease, etc.
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I mean I imagine the goal is to be able to access dhcp clients by hostname when they don't supply one to the server. In which case, yes, just adding an entry without an IP should do it.
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@johnpoz Honestly, and I don't mean any disrespect when I say this, whether you understand it or not is irrelevant. Virtually every other router I have ever used has this functionality, based on the users in this post and in others I've found in searches online it is something that people have also done with other DHCP platforms and want to do with pfSense, and it's hard to believe pfSense can't do it.
I did do as you've pictured and it seems to be working, sort-of.. Sometimes there will be a duplicate listing for the client in the DHCP lease table, while other times it will have a single listing with the host name I have mapped along with an IP from the DHCP pool but is missing the description I provided in the mapping.
From what I can tell the ARP table seems to be involved. I don't know if there is some specific order, but disconnecting the device from the network, clearing the ARP table, and then clearing all dhcp leases seems to do something, though the behavior is inconsistent and not what is expected based on the way the aforementioned routers worked.
I also added nmap, which does provide additional info in some cases, but still not what I'm looking to achieve.
Again, all I want to do is indicate "this MAC address is my kid's tablet" I wanna have some sort of visual indicator that says "susie's tablet" and be able to associate that device to "susie" in an alias or something so that I can set rules and limitations against it, along with any of susie's other devices, and I don't want to assign it a static IP, because I shouldn't have to.
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@stephenw10 YES! This is exactly right. And now that I think about it, this is working and I'm able to access them in an alias in this way. I guess it's just weird to see the DHCP Lease table behavior with duplicate listings for the same host, or sometimes using the mapping but without the description I provided. Do you have any insight into why that may be happening?
