Devices and Alerts

The Devices page is the authoritative inventory. The dashboard summarizes it, while each device page combines identity, network state, profile, history, and available actions.

Device classifications

Classification	Purpose	Dashboard behavior
Unknown	Newly discovered equipment that has not been reviewed	Counted in Unknown and Needs Attention
Known	Reviewed, regular equipment	Counted in regular Devices and Online totals
Visitor	Recognized equipment that appears only occasionally	Shown as a small visitor count under Devices, and under Online only while present
Archived	Retired or intentionally removed equipment	Excluded from active inventory, Home Map, counters, and notifications

Visitor devices are excluded from the Home Map. They are not included in the main regular-device number, so an absent visitor does not permanently inflate the household or office total.

Multiple network interfaces

A computer or other physical device can have more than one MAC address, such as separate Ethernet and Wi-Fi interfaces. Use Merge interfaces on the device page to keep one entry as the primary profile and move selected inventory entries into its network-interface list.

LanGuard continues scanning every MAC address independently. Each interface retains its current and historical IP addresses, reachability state, ports, DNS activity, and event history. The physical device is online when at least one of its interfaces is online, and Wake-on-LAN sends a packet through every retained interface. The primary entry supplies the device name, role, room, icon, notes, and notification settings.

Merging is manual because a shared hostname, vendor, or IP address is not enough evidence that two MAC addresses belong to the same physical device. LanGuard does not automatically combine suggested matches. Use Separate in the network-interface table to return an interface to the inventory as an independent device without deleting its history.

Roles and icons

Roles describe what a device does, while icons control how it is represented in inventory and on the Home Map. They can be selected independently when editing a known device. Dedicated choices include common computers and infrastructure as well as game consoles, laptops, NAS devices, smart relays, smart power strips, and power meters.

Needs Attention

A device can appear under Needs Attention for one or more reasons. The list shows the reason directly, which can include:

• The device is still unknown.
• A risky TCP port is open.
• An IP address was reported by conflicting MAC addresses.
• A regular device has remained offline for more than seven days.
• Another current risk rule has raised the device's attention state.

Visitor devices are excluded from the long-offline rule. Resolved IP/MAC identity conflicts clear automatically after later scans consistently identify the devices. You can mark selected findings as reviewed when they are understood but still valid.

Risky-port findings include a recommended next step. LanGuard provides guidance only: it does not close ports or change device settings.

Open-port guidance

Select an open-port badge on a device page or in the device list to see:

• The service commonly associated with the port and its typical uses.
• A context-aware Expected, Review, or Usually disable recommendation.
• Why the recommendation applies to the device's role or category.
• A practical next step for reviewing or disabling the service on the device itself.
• Whether the label came from the port number rather than direct service detection.

Port numbers alone do not prove which application is listening. This is especially important for alternate web and API ports such as 8080 and 8443, which many unrelated products use. LanGuard reports reachability from the local network only; an open port in LanGuard does not establish that the service is exposed to the Internet.

The guidance catalog is maintained with the LanGuard source and released with the application. Current entries cover common administration, file-sharing, printing, camera-streaming, remote-desktop, and web-interface ports. Ports without a specific catalog entry receive cautious generic review guidance.

See Open-port guidance for the complete explanation, recommendation levels, supported ports, and review workflow.

Device details

The overview contains:

• Vendor, hostname, MAC address, and identity confidence.
• Current IP, ports, last port scan, missed scans, and status source.
• Room, role, first seen, last seen, notification overrides, notes, and access settings.
• Availability history for Day, Week, Month, and Year.
• Timeline events including online/offline transitions and IP changes.
• DNS activity when AdGuard Home or Pi-hole is configured.

Device actions

Depending on permissions and device state, the page may offer:

• Edit device to change classification, name, icon, room, role, notes, and access settings.
• Wake device to send Wake-on-LAN to supported equipment.
• Detailed port scan to queue a custom TCP scan for an online device.
• Archive device to remove retired equipment while retaining history.
• Restore device for an archived item.

Archiving is not a scan exclusion. If archived equipment is still active, discovery can restore it automatically.

External links

A device can have an External link to its local management interface. Enable Follow device IP when the service should keep the configured scheme, port, path, query, and fragment but replace the host with the device's current IPv4 address after DHCP changes.

Example: http://192.168.1.20:8080/admin becomes http://192.168.1.54:8080/admin when that device's current IP changes. Keep the option off for links whose hostname or address must remain fixed.

In device lists, a marked device icon can open the configured interface directly. Selecting the rest of the row still opens the LanGuard device page.

Related links

Each device can also keep an ordered list of related HTTP or HTTPS links. Use these links for externally stored user manuals, purchase invoices, network diagrams, support pages, or other documentation. Related links are separate from the External link because they do not represent the device's management interface and do not follow IP-address changes.

Open Edit device to add, rename, remove, or reorder related links. LanGuard opens them in a new browser tab and rejects unsupported URL schemes or addresses containing embedded credentials. Related links are included in LanGuard inventory exports and restored during import; older inventory files without this field remain compatible.

Home Map

The Home Map groups regular devices into rooms and supports All, Online, Offline, and Attention views. Room headers summarize total, online, and attention device counts, while filtering changes only the visible devices and does not change the saved layout.

Users with the corresponding permission can edit room order and nesting, drag rooms into exact grid positions, adjust top-level room widths, and choose a room icon from the built-in set. Nested rooms and device icons reflow to fit the selected width. Empty drop targets are available while editing; compact displays collapse saved gaps into a readable single-column flow. Reset layout restores the automatic room arrangement, sizes, and default room icons. Visitors and archived devices are excluded from both the map and its displayed device count.