Nebula Auto Naming Wired Clients

SkyGoat

I've noticed what I think is some new (useful) behaviour in Nebula in the last few months.

It used to be that when a Windows PC is connected via ethernet to a Nebula Switch, Nebula would just show the PC's MAC address as the client name.

Recently though I've seen Nebula is now detecting the OS as "Windows 7 or newer" and the Hostname of some Windows PCs and naming the client automatically on Nebula.

It's working on both Windows 10 and 11 computers.

I think the switch is intercepting the clients DHCP requests to get this information. Why? If I take one of the computers, change it to a static IP address, then rename the computer and restart, Nebula stays as the old name. If I change the computer back to DHCP mode, Nebula then auto updates to the new name after a few minutes.

But, Nebula isn't able to do this for every Windows device, for reasons I haven't yet been able to work out.

Is anyone else seeing this?

Zyxel_Melen

Hi @SkyGoat

Thanks for asking. We are clarifying this question and we will update you once we get further information.

GiuseppeR

Hi @SkyGoat

I see similar problems, it seems the way that Nebula follows to display also other (e.g. LLDP) infos.

As you can see here:

I have 2 NICs from the same server where with one of them I have:

• IP
• System name
• OS

While the other one seems to be a ghost.

In my case consider that both of those MACs have reserved IPs as you can see in my DHCP table:

If you use Advanced IP Scanner inside that network, for example, you can see all the IPs.

SkyGoat

Hi @GiuseppeR

Are the two NICs in your server are the same make, model, driver version? Is the second NIC definitely set to DHCP mode in Windows?

In my case, my DHCP server is a Windows server rather than Zyxel.

I don't think the switch is picking up the name and OS from LLDP, because I disabled LLDP on one of the computers, and disabled LLDP on the port it is connected to, and Nebula was still able to report the correct hostname and OS automatically.

GiuseppeR

Hi @SkyGoat

both NICs are the same, twins on each settings.

Both goes for DHCP on the firewall, while the other PCs in my domain use one of those NICs for their DNS (primary) and then firewall DNS (secondary).

I do not understand how Nebula uses and shows the Clients' name area.

It seems a mix of LLDP, NetBIOS names, MAC addresses: so I am not so satisfied by this table of contents, for example to know which IPs are taken I have to use an IP scanner inside my networks instead of reading these values directly from firewalls/security routers made by Zyxel.