Question Asus RT-AC68U router with invisible/missing clients that still function

[Kawboy]

Why would a router not list all clients in the client list? I noticed this before but didn't put it up high on the priority list of fixes because all clients worked fine.

Today it went beyond curiosity to problem when I went to connect an old IP camera I'd used before but forgot to write the IP address down for so I figured I'd go into the client list and see what changed after I plugged it in. IIRC correctly the first client list had about 25 clients but quickly refreshed to 7 before I could screenshot it. It then refreshed to 13 and is fairly consistently bouncing around 13-14 clients since then but there are still some static clients that never show on the list. This behavior survives a reboot. I'm easily into the 20s and maybe low 30s for mostly wired clients between cameras, TVs, Android and Apple TVs, printers, etc. I know that some of the invisible clients are up and working because I can see the cameras on my video wall and are therefore awake and talking to the router.

I'm on the latest stock firmware 3.0.0.4.384_45717 because I updated it today but the problem existed on previous versions as well.

 

[bill001g]

You could try the merlin firmware and see id it works any different.

Part of the issue is the router may not see the traffic. To get high speed on many routers they have a nat feature that bypass the main cpu. Not sure if this is the issue or not but this has been a issue in both merlin and asus firmware. Not sure if they can really fix this since the cpu does not really see the traffic.

 

[Kawboy]

I've been watching the client list refresh and occasionally one of the easiest cameras to identify but almost always missing pops onto the list but then disappears at the next refresh. It might be a "high speed" issue because at about the same time I got this router (my old one was dropping connection to the attached USB drive) I switched to Bell fiber with the HH3000 router. I tried to get the Asus to do all of the routing chores but the HH3000 won't relinquish routing duties because that's how it controls the TVs. Net access through the Asus is sloooow compared to going through the Bell HH.