Client names from fritz.box not showing

Help
1

Expected Behaviour:

Pihole should show client names in the Logs, etc from the Fritzbox

  • Operating System (Family and Version): DietPi
  • Hardware: Virtual Machine
  • DHCP wiv fritzbox, conditional forwarding is configured as "true,192.168.178.0/24,192.168.178.1,fritz.box"

Actual Behaviour:

Some clients are shown with random names (I guess the names they used the first time connected to the Fritzbox)

Here you can see client is shown as “Android-4”

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Here’s the corresponding log:

2025-11-05 07:12:40.735 query[AAAA] rr1---sn-h0jeenl6.googlevideo.com from 192.168.178.52
2025-11-05 07:12:40.735 forwarded rr1---sn-h0jeenl6.googlevideo.com to 8.8.8.8
2025-11-05 07:12:40.809 reply rr1---sn-h0jeenl6.googlevideo.com is <CNAME>
2025-11-05 07:12:40.809 reply rr1.sn-h0jeenl6.googlevideo.com is 2a00:1450:4016:b::6

2025-11-05 07:12:40.812 query[A] rr1---sn-h0jeenl6.googlevideo.com from 192.168.178.52
2025-11-05 07:12:40.812 cached rr1---sn-h0jeenl6.googlevideo.com is <CNAME>
2025-11-05 07:12:40.812 forwarded rr1---sn-h0jeenl6.googlevideo.com to 8.8.8.8
2025-11-05 07:12:40.883 reply rr1---sn-h0jeenl6.googlevideo.com is <CNAME>
2025-11-05 07:12:40.883 reply rr1.sn-h0jeenl6.googlevideo.com is 74.125.154.230

The client is named "Basti-TV" in the fritzbox

Debug Token:

https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/HEpWs6fQ/

2

Let's take a look at how your router at 192.168.178.1 answers a reverse lookup for 192.168.178.52.

Run from your Pi-hole machine, please share the output of:

dig -x 192.168.178.52 @192.168.178.1
3 
; <<>> DiG 9.18.33-1~deb12u2-Debian <<>> -x 192.168.178.52 @192.168.178.1
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 27549
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 4

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;52.178.168.192.in-addr.arpa.	IN	PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
52.178.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 9	IN	PTR	Basti-TV.fritz.box.
52.178.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 9	IN	PTR	Android-4.fritz.box.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
52.178.168.192.in-addr.arpa. 9	IN	NS	fritz.box.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
fritz.box.		9	IN	A	192.168.178.1
fritz.box.		9	IN	AAAA	fd00::464e:6dff:fe26:8250
fritz.box.		9	IN	AAAA	2003:c2:4714:5100:464e:6dff:fe26:8250

;; Query time: 4 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.178.1#53(192.168.178.1) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Wed Nov 05 07:58:39 GMT 2025
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 198
4

Your output demonstrates that your router supplies both names, while Pi-hole associates just a single name with a client IP.

You may be able to encourage Pi-hole to relearn the names, by forcing it to forget all names via Settings | System » Flush network table.

But as long as your router returns both names, chances are that Pi-hole may not pick your preferred name, so it would be advisable to have your router drop that that unwanted name.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of a respective way to reliably do so in Fritzbox routers. Some users have reported that shrinking and regrowing the Fritzbox's DHCP range would make it forget older hostnames.

If that fails, you could create Local DNS Records for Basti-TV in Pi-hole.

5

Thank you - flush network table and restart DNS resolver helped for some clients, but not for all.
There's still the problem which I now know that it's coming from the router

Thanks for your help

6

Did you try a reboot of the Fritzbox?