topic Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly in Cloud Networking Platform

Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

IronNel — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:18:56 GMT

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.

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Raphael_L — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:23:29 GMT

You can't

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

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Raphael_L — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:24:05 GMT

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

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

IronNel — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 21:24:58 GMT

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

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

aleabrahao — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 22:25:52 GMT

Yes, it's the way.

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Philip D'Ath — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 02:34:08 GMT

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_Hostname

User-specified Name
MDNS Name (Bonjour)
NetBIOS Name
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.

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

joey.debra — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:29:59 GMT

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.

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Stuart41 — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 13:01:46 GMT

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!

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Philip D'Ath — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 03:40:07 GMT

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

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Philip D'Ath — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 03:40:35 GMT

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

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

agrepaly — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 07:56:28 GMT

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

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Philip D'Ath — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:08:50 GMT

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.

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

agrepaly — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:14:23 GMT

I would love to hear some exciting news 🙂

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

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Philip D'Ath — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:19:05 GMT

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-names-in-the-Meraki/m-p/281638

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Stuart41 — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:19:47 GMT

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

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

Philip D'Ath — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 20:11:05 GMT

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.

Re: Computer Name Description Not Showing Correctly

IronNel — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 20:47:24 GMT

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