Ok i did some research and testing and i think i found how to display each client instead of only 127.0.0.1 (localhost). It is not a real solution but more like a workaround that is clearly not perfect.
In Open-WRT (the OS used in GL.iNet routers) there is dnsmasq installed, this is a program that provides DNS and DHCP functionality to the router. By default dnsmasq listen to port 53 and by default all your devices connected to your LAN/WLAN private home network use port 53 to make DNS requests.
However AdGuard Home is pre-configured by GL.iNet to listen to port 3053 for DNS requests because port 53 is already taken by dnsmasq on your router.
When you enable AdGuardHome in the ADMIN PANEL of your router, you basically tell it that you don’t want to use dnsmasq anymore for DNS but you’d like to use AdGuard Home to provide the DNS service (with ad blocking added compared to using dnsmasq). However all your devices in your private home network already send their DNS requests to port 53 (dnsmasq).
So when you enable AdGuardHome, GL.iNet configured the thing to add a DNS Forwarding Rule to tell dnsmasq to forward the DNS request to 127.0.0.1 (aka this router) port 3053 (the port used by AdGuard Home). You can see that forwarding rule by going to the Advanced Admin Panel > Network > DHCP and DNS > DNS forwardings 127.0.0.1#3053. When you disable AdGuardHome that DNS Forwarding Rule disappears.
So if you want every device IP address to be displayed in AdGuard Home you need to cut off the middle man (dnsmasq with that DNS Forwardingg Rule) without disabling dnsmasq because it still provides the DHCP service by default. So you want the DNS requests to directly go from our devices to AdGuard Home, in that case the DNS part of dnsmasq is not used.
What we have (by default) :
Connected Device (smartphone, PC …) ----> port 53 dnsmasq —> port 3053 AdGuard Home
(DNS requests come from 127.0.0.1 because they come from dnsmasq)
What we want (requires changing some ports) :
Connected Device (smartphone, PC …) ----> port 53 AdGuard Home
(DNS requests come from each Connected Device IP address)
Steps to do :
1. Backup your router configuration in case something goes wrong, go to the Advanced Admin Panel > System > Backup / Flash Firmware, in the " Backup" section click on “Generate Archive”. Wait a couple minutes then the download window will appear to save the archive on your computer.
2. Use Putty to connect via SSH on your router (by default 192.168.8.1 port 22, login as: root, password: <router_admin_password>)
If you don’t know how to use the Linux (OpenWRT is a Linux distro) “vi” command, read this VI Editor with Commands in Linux/Unix Tutorial to know how to go from Command Mode to Insert Mode to insert or delete text and how to save the modifications or exit without saving.
3. Change the dnsmasq port to something else like 5300 (by default if nothing is specified dnsmasq uses port 53)
In the Putty terminal use “vi” command to add on a new line port=5300 at the end of dnsmasq.conf file
vi /etc/dnsmasq.conf
Then save and exit
4. Change the AdGuard Home port to 53 (by default GL.iNet configured it to use port 3053)
In the Putty terminal use “vi” command to change the dns port to “53” in the AdGuard Home config.yaml file
vi /etc/AdGuardHome/config.yaml
The beginning of your config.yaml file should look like this :
bind_host: 0.0.0.0
bind_port: 3000
beta_bind_port: 0
users: []
auth_attempts: 5
block_auth_min: 15
http_proxy: “”
language: en
rlimit_nofile: 0
debug_pprof: false
web_session_ttl: 720
dns:
bind_hosts:
- 0.0.0.0
port: 53
Then save and exit
5. Restart your router, and check in AdGuard Home if you can see your device IP address now.
If you want to undo what we did, change back the AdGuard Home port to 3053 and dnsmasq port to 53 then restart the router. Or Restore your router configuration with the Backup Archive generated in step 1.
I haven’t tested in depth this modification of ports for dnsmasq and AdGuard Home but it seems to work. I don’t really know if it breaks something else from dnsmasq or something preconfigured by GL.iNet.
I used this post as a baseline :
The first message by “brokenpipe” (the author) tells us to leave the default port 53 for dnsmasq and port 5353 for AdGuard Home (their default port for AGH is not the same as our default port 3053 configured by GL.iNet).
Then in 2.3 instead of changing the port for AGH he adds 2 iptable PREROUTING rules (one for UDP¨one for TCP) in the /etc/firewall.user file to tell the router to replace each DNS request coming from devices (port 53) with port 5353.
So each device send the DNS request on port 53, the router modifies the port to change it to 5353 and then the request ends up going to AGH instead of dnsmasq.
I tried his method but the /etc/firewall.user file already has a script probably made by GL.iNet. If i add the 2 PREROUTING rules before or after the script (i have to adapt this and change port 5353 with port 3053 and change 192.168.1.1 with 192.168.8.1 the router IP Address) and restart the router then nothing changes. And if i delete the script and add the 2 PREROUTING rules and restart the router then i cannot connect to the Internet. So this method doesn’t work for us unless someone is good enough to modify this script orGL.iNet does it for us.
Then the message from “beerisnotacrime” advises us to change ADH and dnsmasq ports just like i explained and this seems to work for us.