ASUS AC-3200 - No way to delete "old" disconnected clients?

[henry_t1]

Running Merlin 380.68_4

As I was setting up some manual addresses for devices in my home, I noticed link under the MAC address pulldown box that says "show offline client list"

There, I could see a long list of really old clients devices that connected to the router before. Hovering on the "X" next to it, it shows "Remove this Client". But when I actually click on it doesn't actually remove the client at all. Is there any way to flush the old connected clients out of my router's memory?

It's really not so much a big deal on the router. But since I use the Android ASUS router app too, my phone will show a flood of all these "offline" clients in the device list. An overwhelming majority of them were people who probably just connected once or twice and is still in my router's memory for some reason. I prefer to just keep track of all the "regular" and active users, and either hide or delete all these useless ones from the list.

Anyone with a solution to this? Preferably not one that requires me to factory reset my router, and reload all my settings every single time new temp users connect?

 

[fuzzydingo]

I have the same issue. I searched online for a resolution to this and found this thread. The Android ASUS router app shows a long list of previously connected devices to my router as well, however I can find no way to remove them.

Here's the steps I follow (as you already mentioned) to replicate this issue:

-Login to router via https web interface
-Left hand side under "Advanced Settings" click "LAN"
-In the tabs in the upper middle click "DHCP Server" tab
-Under the "Manually Assigned IP around the DHCP list (Max Limit: 128)" click the red drop-down arrow
-In the lower right click the link for "Show Offline Client List"

This list will show all previous devices that connected to the router, but clicking the "x" button to the far right which highlights "Remove this client" does nothing, and the device still remains in the list.

These old devices still remain in the Android ASUS router app as well.

I have not tried a factory reset as that would be cumbersome. Seems there should be another way either via the UI or CLI to clear out these old devices.

 

[fuzzydingo]

I have the same issue. I searched online for a resolution to this and found this thread. The Android ASUS router app shows a long list of previously connected devices to my router as well, however I can find no way to remove them.

Here's the steps I follow (as you already mentioned) to replicate this issue:

-Login to router via https web interface
-Left hand side under "Advanced Settings" click "LAN"
-In the tabs in the upper middle click "DHCP Server" tab
-Under the "Manually Assigned IP around the DHCP list (Max Limit: 128)" click the red drop-down arrow
-In the lower right click the link for "Show Offline Client List"

This list will show all previous devices that connected to the router, but clicking the "x" button to the far right which highlights "Remove this client" does nothing, and the device still remains in the list.

These old devices still remain in the Android ASUS router app as well.

I have not tried a factory reset as that would be cumbersome. Seems there should be another way either via the UI or CLI to clear out these old devices.

I have solved my own problem by no longer dealing with this issue and moving to new hardware. Just ordered a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter and a wireless AP. So long Asus, thanks for all the fish!

 

[fitnesspmm]

Does anyone else know how to fix this yet?

 

[AndreiV]

AC3200 : I have no problem clicking the "x" at the right hand end of the list and removing devices from the list.

 

[fitnesspmm]

It use to work in 2017 but it hasn't worked at all in 2018.

I'm running Merlin 384.7 now on AC5300.

 

[fitnesspmm]

Ok, I worked it out! I tried it in "steal your personal information" Chrome and it works.

It doesn't work in Brave or Opera which is what I browse with these days.

 

[AndreiV]

Ok, I worked it out! I tried it in "steal your personal information" Chrome and it works.

It doesn't work in Brave or Opera which is what I browse with these days.

I use Opera, not Chrome ....... works fine for me and looking at my neighbours RT AC5300 running Merlin 384.6 that works fine too.

 

[RJMerlin]

I tried doing the same thing using Firefox. It did not work. After reading others saying that it worked with Chrome, I tried and it worked flawlessly.

EDIT: I was wrong. It appears that clicking on the X does delete the offline device. But when closing the drop-down list of offline devices and re-opening it, the entries are still there.

 

[Zonkd]

Getting it to forget devices seems impossible. I’ve also found it won’t forget the first IP address the DHCP server assigned to the device. I think I saw that it temporarily releases it if another device has the same IP statically assigned, but otherwise aggressively snatches it back if that device goes offline or stops using it.

 

[Martineau]

Getting it to forget devices seems impossible. I’ve also found it won’t forget the first IP address the DHCP server assigned to the device. I think I saw that it temporarily releases it if another device has the same IP statically assigned, but otherwise aggressively snatches it back if that device goes offline or stops using it.

What happens if you rename

'/jffs/nmp_cl_json.js'

 

[Zonkd]

What happens if you rename

'/jffs/nmp_cl_json.js'

I need my current router always online and don’t have a spare router to muck around with for testing that idea sorry.

 

[Martineau]

I tried doing the same thing using Firefox. It did not work. After reading others saying that it worked with Chrome, I tried and it worked flawlessly.

EDIT: I was wrong. It appears that clicking on the X does delete the offline device. But when closing the drop-down list of offline devices and re-opening it, the entries are still there.

Whilst there is a possible GUI bug when seemingly correctly deleting the offline-device, I have a simple script to allow you to selectively remove individual entries that you consider to be truly obsolete:

./DeleteOfflineMAC.sh  -h

#============================================================================================ © 2018 Martineau v1.01
#
# Remove Offline DHCP Server MAC address from pseudo 'clientlist_offline' JSON 'database'.
#
#     DeleteOfflineMAC     { [ MAC_address ] | 'list' | 'flush' ] }
#
#     DeleteOfflineMAC     list
#                          List the contents of JSON 'database'
#     DeleteOfflineMAC     xx:de:ad:de:ad:xx
#                          Delete MAC address entry 'xx:de:ad:de:ad:xx' from JSON 'database'
#     DeleteOfflineMAC     flush
#                          JSON pseudo 'database' is deleted (a backup copy is created should it ever need to be restored!)

or completely 'forget' ALL obsolete transient device connections.

Let me know if you are interested and I will PM you the link.

 

[pilot04]

Whilst there is a possible GUI bug when seemingly correctly deleting the offline-device, I have a simple script to allow you to selectively remove individual entries that you consider to be truly obsolete:

./DeleteOfflineMAC.sh  -h

#============================================================================================ © 2018 Martineau v1.01
#
# Remove Offline DHCP Server MAC address from pseudo 'clientlist_offline' JSON 'database'.
#
#     DeleteOfflineMAC     { [ MAC_address ] | 'list' | 'flush' ] }
#
#     DeleteOfflineMAC     list
#                          List the contents of JSON 'database'
#     DeleteOfflineMAC     xx:de:ad:de:ad:xx
#                          Delete MAC address entry 'xx:de:ad:de:ad:xx' from JSON 'database'
#     DeleteOfflineMAC     flush
#                          JSON pseudo 'database' is deleted (a backup copy is created should it ever need to be restored!)

or completely 'forget' ALL obsolete transient device connections.

Let me know if you are interested and I will PM you the link.

Can you share this script to delete these "offline client"? I have a some that I'd like to remove. Thanks.

 

[Martineau]

Can you share this script to delete these "offline client"? I have a some that I'd like to remove. Thanks.

OK

 

[Martineau]

I can't seem to run the script. I get "-sh: ./deleteofflinemac.sh: not found".

As a long time user (11 months?) of my IPCamsblock.sh script you are clearly not a novice when it comes to creating/editing/executing my scripts.

So exactly what sequence of events did you use to produce the error?..... but I suspect that this fixes it

dos2unix    /jffs/scripts/deleteofflinemac.sh

cd /jffs/scripts/

./deleteofflinemac.sh   -h

 

[pilot04]

It works now after the dos2unix cleanup of the downloaded script. However, the script deletes the MAC clients from the database but still doesn't remove them from the Offline Client List under the LAN/DHCP Server tab. Is there another step that I'm missing?

Also, I deleted like 29 entries and left 2 MAC remaining. When I run deleteofflinemac list output again, it shows
"No. Offline Comparison Database Entries=3" even though there are only 2 MAC listed.

 

[Martineau]

I deleted like 29 entries and left 2 MAC remaining.

Wow, that must have been tedious!

When I run deleteofflinemac list output again, it shows
"No. Offline Comparison Database Entries=3" even though there are only 2 MAC listed.

Whoops.

I have fallen foul of the old embarrassing scripting gotcha when attempting to count the number of lines in a file:
i.e. I lazily used the unreliable method

wc -l file_name

rather than one of the reliable methods

grep ^ file_name
or
awk 'END {print NR}' file_name

So the actual count returned by 'wc -l' is incorrect, and to further compound the error, I forgot about the additional control lines which should not be counted.

v1.02 uploaded to correctly display the number of database records.

The script deletes the MAC clients from the database but still doesn't remove them from the Offline Client List under the LAN/DHCP Server tab.

Is there another step that I'm missing?

Did you leave the DHCP Server page then go back to it?...i.e. the modified database isn't used to populate the Offline Client list until you trigger a new DHCP Server page to be displayed.
​

 

[pilot04]

Okay, the v1.02 scripts worked for the dozen I removed and then clicking on different tab and coming back. The entry count is also correct now.

Where is that database getting populated from as it went from 2 entries remaining from this morning's removal effort to 37 entries when I ran v1.02?

There's still about 17 entries from the Offline Client List DHCP Server page that aren't even listed in the "Offline Comparison Database Entries" script output which currently has 16 entries after cleanup with v1.02. I'm good for now as entries I really wanted gone aren't there now.

 

[Martineau]

Okay, the v1.02 scripts worked for the dozen I removed and then clicking on different tab and coming back. The entry count is also correct now.
I'm good for now as entries I really wanted gone aren't there now.

OK so the script does work.

Where is that database getting populated from

The database appears to record all new connections as they occur in real-time.

So when you enter the DHCP Server TAB, I think the contents of the database is simply compared against whatever ACTIVE devices are currently shown in the Network Map, and obviously whatever doesn't match is marked/displayed as 'Offline'.

If the database has been flushed i.e. doesn't exist, then when the next new connection is detected, the database is seemingly immediately populated with the DHCP Reserved list entries and additional entries derived by the closed-source Network map process.

There's still about 17 entries from the Offline Client List DHCP Server page that aren't even listed in the "Offline Comparison Database Entries" script output which currently has 16 entries after cleanup with v1.02.

The only true test would be to use the 'flush' option to see if those 17 rogue entries can actually be physically deleted in your environment.


(P.S. v1.03 now includes an 'import' function so you can restore a backup copy of the database.)