how to get a list of the connected wifi clients in OpenWrt 10.03?

Solution 1:

In order to see associated wifi clients, even if they don't have a DHCP Client or have no ip, you have to ask the AP for associated wifi devices:

# Universal (Tested with OpenWRT 14.07 and 15.05.X)
iwinfo wlan0/wl0/ath0 assoclist

# Proprietary Broadcom (wl)
wl -i wl0 assoclist

# Proprietary Atheros (madwifi)
wlanconfig ath0 list sta

# MAC80211
iw dev wlan0 station dump

This way you will also see the connection speed. For me this is looking like this:

# iwinfo wlan0 assoclist
12:34:56:78:9A:BC  -26 dBm / -95 dBm (SNR 69)  1930 ms ago
RX: 24.0 MBit/s, MCS 0, 20MHz                   3359 Pkts.
TX: 130.0 MBit/s, MCS 14, 20MHz, short GI       1209 Pkts.

Solution 2:

You may use the arp-table, or DHCP-leases. Not a perfect solution, maybe it's enough?

List arp-table

arp

List DHCP-leases

cat /tmp/dhcp.leases

... and combined

for ip in $(arp | grep -v IP | awk '{print $1}'); do 
    grep $ip /tmp/dhcp.leases; 
done

---

Solution 3:

Instead of cat /tmp/dhcp.leases|wc -l and arp -a, my solution is

opkg update
opkg install arp-scan
arp-scan --interface=br-lan --localnet | grep responded | awk '{print $12}'

It will return the number of devices which connected to OpenWRT by LAN port. Almost real time.