Netgear managed switch disappears from client list

[RumorConsumer]

I got a Netgear 8 port switch w 2 SFP ports that’s connected via Ethernet to my MX65. On the first day i had them set up the netgear had acquired an IP itself and was viewable on the backend client list as a connected device over Ethernet. A couple days later, it has disappeared from the active clients list. If i go to see the active clients older than a day it shows up grey. I can click it, see the IP it was on and connect to the switch and log in no problem from inside my LAN. So it has an IP, it works, and it’s handling a ton of network traffic. Why doesn’t it still show up in active clients? Low power mode or something?

[PhilipDAth]

The clients list shows traffic going through the MX.

Your L2 switch is not generating any traffic itself, so it doesn't show up as an active client.  Perhaps when it first started up it sent an NTP query or something.

[Nash]

Checked through my clients for someone with an MX and managed Netgear switches. Managed Netgear switches, configured for public NTP at pool.ntp.org, show up on the dashboard just fine.

Managed netgear switch with no NTP does not show up on the dashboard.

Unless you have a significant reason to not use public NTP, I'd go with configuring that to create traffic. Based on how you've described your environment elsewhere, I'm guessing that you'd be fine. 😊

[RumorConsumer]

Right again guys. Configured NTP on each of the switches and they bounce a monster 1k around now on the client list 😉. Great idea.

[SLR]

You are able to ping the device and communicate to it as well, correct? I have that with some L2 switches as well. When I ping it, it shows up in the dashboard as an active client. Does this switch generate a lot of traffic?

[RumorConsumer]

@PhilipDAth yes I had thought maybe that was the case. Some small packet load to get itself oriented. I have been thinking what I could do to test this like trigger a firmware update check or something that would establish itself again as whatever the MX considers to be a "live client". Ill keep playing with it.

@SLR yes I can ping it, and I can even log in and configure it. It works as a managed device exactly as it did when it was shown as live in the client list.

[TBisel]

What I have done in the past is send a IP scan for the subnet over the VPN from another location. We have security cameras and a lot of other things scattered around multiple sites that has plenty of L2 traffic but nothing that ever needs to hit the logic of the MX. So usually I just send some type of IP traffic from another VLAN and give it a few seconds to populate.