DHCP leases view does not display all devices

0lek · Nov 9, 2014, 6:21 PM

Dears,

I'm running 2.1.5 on an APU board from pcengines.

Yesterday I had a problem with my NAS - after a restart, I couldn't log in via the GUI to it. However, it's DLNA server was working, as I could access it from the TV.

I thought that maybe it changed its IP (there is a static lease configured, but who knows…). I go to Status->DHCP leases and two observations:

There is a lease for it (the static lease) , but it is shown as "offline"
There are at least two other devices not shown in the list: TV and AVR - both are configured via DHCP

Either I'm confused or pfSense doesn't show all leases in this view. Should I check somewhere else?

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

phil.davis · Nov 10, 2014, 3:58 AM

1. Devices will show as "offline" if there is no ARP cache entry on pfSense. The code does not try to ping or ARP each device before displaying that list. A device that is purely talking on the local LAN (not ever going out to the internet) might not have any packet interchange with pfSense after getting its DHCP lease, and thus the ARP cache entry on pfSense would quickly timeout and be gone.
If you ping the device from pfSense, then I expect it would then automagically appear as "online".

2. If they are using DHCP, then I am not sure why they would be completely missing from the list - usually things like this appear with their lease IP and show as "offline" if they have not talk for a while.

0lek · Nov 10, 2014, 8:33 AM

Phil,

thanks again. Makes sense. I didn't think of the fact that if packets are switched on the switch, pfsense is not involved. I'll look at the switch then.

And as for point 2. –> strange. Where could I look for more details on hosts connected?

Take care,
0lek