Apple clients incorrectly identified on RT-AC87U

[ChrisC]

I have a number of Apple clients in my network. Most are ok, but the UI consistently incorrectly identifies at least one of them.

Apple Airport Extreme: I use a static IP of 192.168.1.6 on this device.
Apple-TV: I use a Dynamic IP for this device, but manually tie it down to 192.168.1.210

However, on the list of network clients, it consistently shows 192.168.1.210 to be the Apple Airport Extreme (not the Apple-TV, as it should be) with 2 clients connected though it. This is totally incorrect. 192.168.1.6 doesn't show up at all.

I can confirm that my DHCP (managed by the AC87U) starts the DHCP address pool from 192.168.1.100.
There is only one DHCP server on my network.

If I use "who's on my network" from another utility (WiFi Scanner - MacOSX), it correctly identifies both clients at their correct IP addresses. So it really does look like a bug on the ASUS.

Anyone?

 

[L&LD]

This is a known issue for routers used with an AP, such as your AE seems to be used for.

 

[highwire]

It's Bonjour sleep proxy, something that only Apple devices use. If one device goes to sleep (say, your Apple TV), then the Airport Extreme assumes ownership of its IP address. The idea is that if somebody tries to access the Apple TV while it's sleeping, the Airport extreme gets the data and sends a wake on LAN to the Apple TV to wake it up. Some third-party routers (like ASUSs) can properly show the IP address bindings, others don't.

 

[sfx2000]

However, on the list of network clients, it consistently shows 192.168.1.210 to be the Apple Airport Extreme (not the Apple-TV, as it should be) with 2 clients connected though it. This is totally incorrect. 192.168.1.6 doesn't show up at all.

As mentioned above, it's Bonjour Sleep Proxy and how the network map app maps it out...

Where things can get odd - one doesn't need an Airport for SleepProxy, the AppleTV can do this as well, which can cause some confusion.

Good example here is the AppleTV at my folks house - since it is acting as a proxy, if I log into their Linksys Router (WRT with SmartWiFi), their network map still shows my Macbook on their network, even though it has not been there in over a year... see the Macbook's name and IP, but mapped to the MAC address of the AppleTV...

If you login to the command line interface of the Asus - one can use arp -a and see IP's and MAC addresses of machines that are actually associated with the LAN...

 

[highwire]

As mentioned above, it's Bonjour Sleep Proxy and how the network map app maps it out...

Where things can get odd - one doesn't need an Airport for SleepProxy, the AppleTV can do this as well, which can cause some confusion.

Correct. My network has an AppleTV, three Mac minis and a MacBook Pro. Normally the Apple TV is the sleep proxy server, but occasionally it hangs and I find one of the Mac minis takes over as the server. There's a white paper that explains how it works. If multiple devices on the network are capable of being the server, they vote to see who gets to assume control. I find that it will even wake up newer windows machines.

 

[sfx2000]

I find that it will even wake up newer windows machines.

If I recall correctly, those Windows machines need to at least have Bonjour* installed - Win10 might be different as it has an mDNS implementation inside (however, somewhat broken compared to Avahi and Bonjour on MacOS).

* easiest way to get Bonjour on Windows is to install iTunes, which includes it as part of the install..