Can I prevent an infrequently used device from disappearing

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Chris Thomas

• February 16, 2021 22:15

Is there a way to prevent infrequently used devices from being removed from the device list?

Use Case;

Gaming PC with dual NICs, I had policies applied against the primary MAC, kid was cleaning up cables and plugged cable back into secondary NIC, the secondary MAC showed up in Firewalla, but did not have any of the policies.  I created a group and put both devices in the group and applied the policies I wanted.  Fast forward to now, Firewalla has deleted the device associated with the primary NIC, which means now the policies wont be applied to that MAC should it come back online.

I think simply having a check-box to prevent scavenging of a device would be a good option.  And or, perhaps by Network as well.  I might for instance, disable scavenging on my mgmt network, but leave it enabled for my user and guest networks.

 

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  Chris Thomas

  • February 16, 2021 22:18

  Additionally, being able to 'merge' objects for devices with multiple network adapters would be nice as well.  i.e., because I primarily use my laptop wirelessly, the object associated with my wired nic is frequently scavenged.

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  Firewalla

  • February 16, 2021 22:41

  It takes a long time for the back end to delete devices, so it is highly likely when the primary NIC is up, the policies should be there.  If not, please let me know, it is a bug. 

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  Chris Thomas

  • February 17, 2021 02:13

  But the primary NIC wont come back online unless my kid moves the cable to the other port on the back of his PC.

  This isn't a theoretical discussion, I actually experienced this problem, and I'm conveying to you a need.

  I need a mechanism that prevents FWG from automatically deleting a device that hasn't been seen on the network for a while.

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  Firewalla

  • February 17, 2021 03:12

  I think the devices stay in the system for a very long time.  If you did experience the rules vanishing, I'll need to check with the developers and see if there is a possibility there is a bug that may cause that to happen.  Will get back to you.

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  Chris Thomas

  • February 17, 2021 03:18

  Are you suggesting that if a device has a rule associated with it, it wont be deleted?

  Even after the device no longer appears in the UI?

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  Support Team

  • February 17, 2021 03:36

  The rules won't be deleted, and the device was not deleted from the box either. It's considered as "non-active", and not displayed in the device list.

  When the device appears again, the existing rules will automatically be applied.

  We'll improve this in future release to display non-active devices in the app.

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  Chris Thomas

  • February 17, 2021 12:55

  I see.

  An option to not hide certain inactive devices could be useful.

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  Tom van B

  • November 01, 2021 07:19

  Maybe add this options to certain selectable networks

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  Support Team

  • November 01, 2021 07:58

  There is another way: if you make an IP reservation for that device (Device -> IP Address -> Reserved), it will not disappear any more.

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  Kalle Mellerup

  • July 06, 2022 12:20

  Thanks for the work around. I am now reserving IP addresses for all devices.  But I really would like you to have a feature not to hide inactive devices in the GUI.

  If the inactive period was like 1 year or so, it probably wouldn't be an issue but two weeks is just too little. We have several devices in our household that are powered off for a few weeks between uses. It is really annoying that I cannot do any configuration until they are actively turned on again.

  According to https://www.reddit.com/r/firewalla/comments/k787ma/inactive_devices_disappearing/
  you are not doing anything about this until more customers ask for it..  but now we are a few both here and on reddit that would like the same thing. Please consider.  TIA!

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