Wrong client names

[DH_912]

Hello,

Some of the client names are not showing up correctly on the Meraki Dashboard.

I recently renamed my Unifi access points within the Unifi environment, but the old client names are still showing up in Meraki. There are other examples as well. 

Examples:
- AP 10.1.0.52 (static IP) should be 7th - 52, but it is still showing up as 5A

- For another AP, the mac address is being used as the client name instead of what I named it in Unifi

- I renamed my iPhone, and the new name shows up in Unifi, but it did not change in Meraki.

Is there a way I can fix this without manually renaming all of the clients?

Thanks for your help.

[BlakeRichardson]

@DH_912  Unifi is not a Meraki product so I am confused as to what the problem is. The Meraki dashboard looks up device hostnames, if the device has not host name is will simply display its MAC address. 

[DH_912]

Thanks for your reply. 

I know that Unifi is not a Meraki product, but the issue seems to be Meraki (although I could be wrong, that's what I'm trying to figure out). 

I gave my access points new names, and I renamed my iPhone, but the new names are not reflected in the Meraki dashboard. Interestingly, I renamed my MacBook Air and that was reflected in Meraki. 

I know the hierarchy of naming is as follows: 

- User-specified Name (dashboard)
- MDNS Name (Bonjour)
- NetBIOS Name
- DHCP Hostname

All clients have names, but I'm trying to figure out why when I set the name on the device itself, it's not showing up in Meraki. I'm hoping to avoid renaming them manually within the Meraki dashboard. 

[cmr]

@DH_912 what are you using for DNS and does that show the correct names?  I find pretty much nothing on our network shows a device set name and I'm not surprised as we run our own Windows DNS, rather than using Meraki devices for it.

[DH_912]

We don't have a separate DNS server, just Google Public DNS under DHCP. We use Unifi for our access points and a Meraki firewall and switches.

[PhilipDAth]

I don't know the answer.

I think when the Meraki dashboard assigns a name to a client that it is permanent, and the auto-naming system no longer runs for that client.  From then on you have to configure it manually.

[Russ_B]

@PhilipDAth  That has been my experience as well.  We have had issues here where new Windows clients would get some bogus MDNS name when we added them to the network, I turned off MDNS and it made no difference until I told the dashboard to forget that client, then when it re-detected it the hostname was correct.

[DH_912]

I think that's what happened.....I inherited the system after it was set up, and I believe the clients were manually named and therefore weren't auto naming