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Incorrect Hostname Reporting?

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"Stormy D"
  • Edited

I have (2) Apple TVs and (2) Microsoft Xbox One consoles. All of these devices are on the same subnet, all are hardwired via Ethernet and all IPs are configured via DHCP.

I just received a Firewalla notification that my Apple TV was playing games on a Microsoft site. I know this to be incorrect because both Apple TVs were asleep. And I don’t play games on them. 

Is it possible that the Firewalla Blue box misidentified an Apple TV for an Xbox?

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    Firewalla

    One possibility is somehow the devices changed IP addresses, and for a moment, the old IP was tied to a new device.  Are you using the production 1.961 code? or the beta 1.963?  

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    "Stormy D"

    Production code. Both devices are DHCP, but I don't think either of them have been rebooted or have renewed leases in a long while. Ill keep an eye on them...

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    FF

    Same issue here:

    a number of devices are listed under their MAC-address vendor name instead of their hostnames.

    I also confirmed that that reverse dns lookup resolution works properly so if firewalla were to use the name provided by the router it wouldn't have any issues:

    nslookup 192.168.0.240 192.168.0.1
    240.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa name = foo.bar.mooo.com.

    setup:

    • router(with dhcp & dns ) = ASUS RT-AC88U = 192.168.0.1
    • firewalla plugged straight into the router running "experimental simple mode"
    • note: some devices are plugged into a TP-link switch in turns plugged into the ASUS router (as opposed to get plugged directly into the router's ports or wifi)

     

     

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    Firewalla

    Depends on the host, it may take a while for the true name to show up... we have 6 different mechanisms to "guess" the name of the device. 

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    FF

    That's interesting, can you please expand on these 6 methods?

    I would have expected to rely on the DNS from the DHCP server to be one of the first.

     

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    Martins

    Hi there, I'm facing the same issue! My wife cellphone is being reported "playing games on Steam" and her phones doesn't have steam, my desktop does!

    I'm on Alpha program, you guys may able to pull some log to check out right ?

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    Firewalla

    @rodrigo, for that send us a email, it may require digging.  Also, see if this persists, and also check your DHCP lease times. (adjust them to be longer if you have short ones).  

    This usually happen when devices changes IP ... 

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    Andymcollins

    I know im dragging up an old post, but is this still a known issue?  I am still getting the same thing on my Firewalla Blue, The IPs of the devices have not changed but im getting notifications that my iphone is playing games on fortnite or is watching videos.

    Firstly i have never played fortnite on phone and secondly there are no other devices switched on that could be playing fortnite.

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    Martins

    Hi guys, Sorry for some reason I didn't received the email about this response, and just got a email about @Andymcollins reply !

    So, I had that issue with my Firewalla red, then I got the blue on Beta program and was still facing that issue, and I notice that the IP's never changed because I setup on the gateway to never change, and still with that issue!

    Now I have the Firewalla Gold as the main router, doing the DHCP, and couple days ago I notice something similar... I'm not sure what happened, but I'm investigating it... if I see that's also happening with the Gold as router I'll post back here !

    Just tacking advantage, the lease time for the Gold, it's in seconds right ?

    Thanks !

     

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    Rolando Nispiros

    I had the same thing happen to my Gold when I was in Experimental Simple Mode.  The Firewalla alert told me that my iPhone was playing games on the Nintendo Switch, which I wasn't.  Last night, I switched to Router mode, not because of this, but let's see if this alert happens again...

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    Andymcollins

    Mine is in DHCP Mode

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    Tom Jarvis

    Sorry to dig up an old thread.  But came here to search for exactly this. 

    I get told my Samsung TV is playing games on Nintendo; that the Nintendo is watching movies on Xbox.com; that the Xbox is streaming Netflix; and then that the wireless access point has consumed 5GB of data in the past 2 hours. 

     

     

     

     

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