AiMesh not showing connected WiFi clients

[ruffle]

Hello,

I have an XT12 in AP Mode and other Asus models in an AiMesh setup. The primary XT12 has it's 2.5G LAN port connected to my LAN and the others use their WAN ports to connect to the same LAN all as suggest in the ASUS setup documentation. The primary XT12 is running Asus-Merlin 3006.102.6 and the others the latest stock firmware. All of the devices use Ethernet backhaul on the 192.168.1.0/24 network. This is great and everything's working very well with better coverage than my old BT Wholehome mesh system. Hats off to the Asus-Merlin team.

However... I also have a bunch of IOT type devices that connect via WiFi and use the 10.1.1.0/24 network. These are mostly fixed IP set in the device although a few do use DHCP.

Even though these devices are obviously connecting to, authenticating with and passing traffic on my AiMesh WiFi setup *none* of them are showing up in the connected devices on the UI.

Here's a screen scrape:

If you look at the XT9 labelled 'Workshop' it shows nothing's connected... which isn't true.

If I ssh onto the device and run "wl -i wl0.1 assoclist" is shows (MAC addresses obfuscated):

admin@ZenWiFi_XT9-4C50:/tmp/home/root# wl -i wl0.1 assoclist
assoclist 88:XX:XX:XX:XX:3E
assoclist B0:XX:XX:XX:XX:AC
assoclist 24:XX:XX:XX:XX:E0
assoclist E8:XX:XX:XX:XX:16
assoclist CC:XX:XX:XX:XX:E0
assoclist 2C:XX:XX:XX:XX:E5
assoclist CC:XX:XX:XX:XX:17
assoclist A4:XX:XX:XX:XX:1B
admin@ZenWiFi_XT9-4C50:/tmp/home/root#

which are devices on the 10.1.1.0/24 network.

Doing "arp -a" shows a whole list of devices on my LAN 192.168.1.0/24 (wired and wireless) but nothing whatsoever on the 10.1.1.0/24 network even though these are connected to this XT9 and working.

I've obviously done something silly (although I can't think what) and yes I have searched this forum for answers with no luck.

Can anyone tell me how I get *all* of the connected WiFi devices to show up?

Thanks

 

[Tech9]

What device is acting as Router on your network? How did you define VLAN's on the XT12 and AiMesh behind it? This mixed system doesn't even offer this functionality. What is Asuswrt-Merlin role in AiMesh in AP Mode? Sounds like some custom configuration we may need more details about.

 

[ruffle]

My Router/Gateway is a PFSense box that's dual homed on the 192.168.1.0/24 and 10.1.1.0/24 networks. No VLAN - simply multiple networks on the same wires.

My Asus's are all on the 192.168.1.0/24 network with a gateway of the PFSense box (192.168.1.X). Devices with the same gateway on my 192.168.1.0/24 LAN can happily talk to devices on the 10.1.1.0/24 network (a couple of machines on the 192.168.1.0/24 network are also dual homed).

Everything's actually working... but I can't see which node any WiFi device on the 10.1.1.0/24 network is using and no easy way of seeing how many WiFi devices are in use.

Ironically, my old BT Wholehome mesh did show all connected WiFi devices on each node.

 

[Tech9]

No VLAN - simply multiple networks on the same wires.

Sorry, I don't understand your terminology and network topology. From what I see so far in my opinion you have wrong hardware for the task. With VLAN capable Gateway and Ethernet infrastructure you shoot yourself in the foot with this limited functionality and compatibility consumer mesh. It has limited compatibility even between own devices. Someone else may try to help you with the client list...

 

[bbunge]

I understand what you are doing and if it works, good for you(I have done a similar setup)! But, with the XT12 Pro in AP mode and not assigning addresses it may never pick up the 10.x.x.x network clients. You may have better chance of success with Asus firmware on all the devices as in AP or AiMesh mode there is no advantage to using Merlin firmware.
You could fool around with a VLAN but my guess is things could get messed up. Then again, the clients could show up in time. Asus network map can be wonky.

 

[Seth Harman]

Although there's been a few posts regarding Guest Network Pro VLAN clients sometimes taking awhile to show up in the AiMesh node client lists it is working under AiMesh/Guest Network Pro (it's certainly working on mine and my 192.168.1.x and 192.168.53.x clients all show up). The fact that you aren't using Asus hardware as the router and it isn't the originator of the VLAN is, to me, the most obvious candidate for the source of the problem. I think the assumption would be that the Asus software is live-polling for connected clients at the nodes to populate the lists in the UI but maybe this breaks if the Asus hardware itself isn't what's in control of the VLAN , or maybe it just breaks for any network the Asus hardware itself isn't actually a member of when in AP-mode: the way to test this would be to make the Asus hardware all part of the 10.1.1.x network and then see if those addresses show up but none of the 192.168.1.x ones do. Luckily for you the setup is actually working so at least there's that.