Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

[IronNel]

I've seen previous posts on this, but haven't seen anything new in several years.

We're running a mix of Cisco Meraki 9300 and Meraki MS210 switches for our company. When we click into Network-Wide--Clients. A majority of our clients have MDNS names that look like the image attached.

We're running 99% Windows machines, with a few Linux and VMWare devices sprinkled in.

How can I force Meraki to pull the actual client host name and not these MDNS names?

I know I can go in and re-name the clients, but we have several hundred devices, and that is a nightmare.

[RaphaelL]

You can't 

We have been asking this for ages , but Meraki is not listening. 

[RaphaelL]

NO ONE uses mDNS , but Meraki thought it would be a good idea to priorise mDNS over DHCP. My rant of the day

[IronNel]

So I just have to "suck it up" or constantly rename?

[alemabrahao]

Yes, it's the way.

[PhilipDAth]

I'm a bit grey on this.  There are two name resolution protocols, LLMNR and MDNS.  I changed something on our machines (I might have turned one of them off), to fix this, but it was several years ago, and I don't recall what it was now.

The name is determined using this ordering:
https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Cross-Platform_Content/Rename_a_Client's_Hos...

1. User-specified Name
2. MDNS Name (Bonjour)
3. NetBIOS Name
4. DHCP Hostname

I just checked my machine, and I noticed we don't have the Bonjour service installed, so perhaps I just removed this service from our standard image.  You can uninstall it using appwiz.cpl.

I see there is some config for LLMNR located Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\DNSClient, with a field called EnableMDNS.

I hope that gives you enough to let Google find the proper answer.  If you find the correct answer, please return and let everyone else know.

[DarrinUllrich]

I made some changes to our machines—possibly turned one off—to fix the issue, but it was several years ago, and I don't remember exactly what I did.

[GIdenJoe]

You can clearly see the computers that are locally managed and those that are Intune managed.  The intune ones always have that weird long name.

I guess making a wish to make the order configurable would be handy.

[PhilipDAth]

Our machines are all Intune managed and have their names display correctly.

[Stuart4]

Meraki really need to listen to their customers on this issue.  It is a major frustration and causes huge headaches when trying to manage the estate. 

We use DHCP on the Meraki MX, i can see the NETBIOS name in the DHCP requests ..... but then Meraki assigns an MDNS name ..... why do that? what is the point!

Come on Meraki ..... listen to your customers!

[PhilipDAth]

@IronNel , I wouldn't mind working on this one further and trying to crack it.  Are you still having the issue?

[grepaly]

I don't think there is a solution to this, other then Meraki switching this off, or giving us a switch which allows us to disable it.

This is caused by a "privacy" feature of Edge and Chrome. You might have noticed that with some computers this does not happen. Well, those are not running any of these browsers. It would be easy, let us switch that off. If I remember well, for Edge, there is a registry setting. But for Chrome, you have to do it on the GUI. Which means it can be done, but has to be done one by one. It does not scale. Can not be rolled out to thousands of machines.

Some people suggest to pull the MAC address from some other source (Intune, or any other asset tracking db) and rename the computers. This could work..., in certain cases but not all. We use USB-C docking stations, so the MAC belongs to the docking station, not the computer. So practically on the wireless it would work, but not on the wired. (We are using 802.1X on the wireless, so there is a username shown for those, so this issues with wireless is less relevant for us.)

We could block mDNS on the switches. Well, that would solve the issue, but cause some other issues with  screen sharing, printer discovery, etc.

We could implement 802.1X on wired and wireless, which would show either username or computer name. This would actually be one of the closest to being able to call it a solution. Still, for the docking stations, in certain situations it shows a name which is not the right one.

I am out of ideas. Anyone?

I find it incredible stupid that there is super nice dashboard and then a _feature_ which would just need to be disabled (vs the lack of it) makes it impossible to identify a client.

Andras

[PhilipDAth]

I think it might be simpler.

Windows includes an MDNS/LLMNR agent.  I think it might be as simple as configuring it to respond to MDNS queries.  I am trying to test if simply responding to an MDNS query is sufficient to update the name in the dashboard.

[grepaly]

I would love to hear some exciting news 🙂

Just make sure that you run Edge and Chrome as well!

A.

[PhilipDAth]

I'm working on it in this thread if you want to provide some help.

https://community.meraki.com/t5/Full-Stack-Network-Wide/Who-is-still-having-an-issue-with-client-nam...

[Stuart4]

mDNS introduces several security risks so my Cyber Security Team won't allow it.

[PhilipDAth]

The problem is - many things on the machine can produce MDNS packets.  For example, Google Chrome does.

I often see that companies disable it for Windows, but not all the software running on Windows.

[IronNel]

Yes, still having the issue. Been looking into Meraki Systems Manager to see if maybe that would work, but haven't gotten that far.