Because my Amazon Dot isn’t.
I can ask Alexa questions and get answers. However I cannot get it to discover Vera devices.
In my case Alexa connects directly to a Fritz!box via WiFi. My PCs etc all connect to the Fritz!box via a managed router. The Dot’s mac address appears in the Fritz!box network page and is listed as connected (I have reserved an IP address) but the MAC address is not listed on the router’s automatically generated MAC address list page. I also have a WeMo that also connects in the same way as the Dot and it can be pinged from my PC through the router and Fritz!box. I also have a Wifi laptop that does not connect via the switch ie it also uses the Fritz!box Wifi Ap as the Dot and it also can’t ping the Dot.
It’s as if the Dot’s internet connection is fine but it won’t connect to the local LAN. However the Fritz!box knows when the Dot is connected or not connect to its WiFi AP.
Any ideas and can you Ping your Echos, etc.
[quote=“a-lurker, post:1, topic:195036”]Because my Amazon Dot isn’t.
I can ask Alexa questions and get answers. However I cannot get it to discover Vera devices.
In my case Alexa connects directly to a Fritz!box via WiFi. My PCs etc all connect to the Fritz!box via a managed router. The Dot’s mac address appears in the Fritz!box network page and is listed as connected (I have reserved an IP address) but the MAC address is not listed on the router’s automatically generated MAC address list page. I also have a WeMo that also connects in the same way as the Dot and it can be pinged from my PC through the router and Fritz!box. I also have a Wifi laptop that does not connect via the switch ie it also uses the Fritz!box Wifi Ap as the Dot and it also can’t ping the Dot.
It’s as if the Dot’s internet connection is fine but it won’t connect to the local LAN. However the Fritz!box knows when the Dot is connected or not connect to its WiFi AP.
Any ideas and can you Ping your Echos, etc.[/quote]
They are not pingable. I’m assuming they disabled ICMP requests on purpose for this type of device. So this is normal. I tried it because I like to know all my devices on my network and mac addy’s. I have a visio desktop wallpaper of my network and zwave devices so I can refer to some of this information and I think it looks cool. So when I wanted to be sure I tried pinging but ultimately had to look the mac’s up on the Amazon Echo website to confirm the mac addresses. I bought the NetX PRO android lan discovery app, it’s worth the money in my opinion. It also cannot ping the Echo/Tap I have.
I use FING as an app on iOS and all 12 of my Echos get pinged by my APs, FING and my router(pfsense). But indeed no ICMP ping.
Thank you people. Now I know not to waste my time on thinking my dots are not connected to my LAN, when I find none of my Vera devices are discoverable by the Alexa app. Doesn’t explain why my devices are not discoverable but it’s a step in the right direction.
Disabling the ICMP ping may be for security but my understanding is that, it’s not really a good idea.
May be queries could be added along the lines of:
“Alexa your MAC address”
“Alexa your IP address”
“Alexa ping MY_COMPUTER_NAME”
“Alexa your status”
“Alexa are you connected” works but if the DOT speaks then it must be connected.
“What is your version” gives a response but not a useful one.
[quote=“a-lurker, post:4, topic:195036”]Thank you people. Now I know not to waste my time on thinking my dots are not connected to my LAN, when I find none of my Vera devices are discoverable by the Alexa app. Doesn’t explain why my devices are not discoverable but it’s a step in the right direction.
Disabling the ICMP ping may be for security but my understanding is that, it’s not really a good idea.
May be queries could be added along the lines of:
“Alexa your MAC address”
“Alexa your IP address”
“Alexa ping MY_COMPUTER_NAME”
“Alexa your status”
“Alexa are you connected” works but if the DOT speaks then it must be connected.
“What is your version” gives a response but not a useful one.[/quote]
I agree with your queries. There are several threads ongoing about Alexa not finding devices such as basic switches and such. Many people are uninstalling/disabling/reinstalling/rerun discovery in various ways and then getting success and some still no success at all. I can’t really explain it. I had some discovery issues in the beginning but it worked itself out after several discoveries over 1 or 2 days during Christmas.
Internal ICMP ping shouldn’t be an issue as it will have a non-routable IP address anyways so you are right it doesn’t make much sense. Basic port scans of the device as well don’t reveal anything which may or may not be a good thing for would be hackers.
I know this is an old topic, but you might want to look into arping. I don’t know if there’s a windows version of it or not, but devices absolutely have to respond to ARP in order for them to actually function. You do have to be on the same subnet for arping to work, but that’s not a problem for most home networks.
(ARP is what devices use to get the MAC address of the device with a certain IP address, which it needs in order to talk Ethernet to it.)
[quote author=flaquito link=topic=41419.msg332015#msg332015 date=1508287238]
I know this is an old topic, but you might want to look into arping.[quote]
I’d forgotten about arping, thanks for refreshing my memory. Works great.