I have a device A configured as an introducer for a bunch of devices, say B, C and D, with a common folder X.
At first, I wanted all devices to communicate with each other, and it worked fine : A shared the folder with B, C and D and introduced them to each other.
But now I’d like a setup where B and C can communicate, but where D only talks to A. So I tried to unset A’s introducer flag on D, so that I can delete B and C, and ignore them once they try to reconnect. This seemed to work fine until I set A’s introducer flag back on D (because I want it to be an introducer : I just want to be able to force ignore some devices) : after a while, B and C got introduced back again to D and were removed from the ignored devices list.
I sense everything is working as designed and I’m just trying to hack things here, could someone confirm ?
If that’s the case, I think there’s room for improvement here, because I can’t see why the introducer and ignored devices features couldn’t/shouldn’t get along. See the details below if you’d like to learn more about my use case and why I think that :
Details
Here’s the details behind my use case : A is an always on NAS and B and C are in the same network as A. D however is a mobile device, so in order for it to sync with the others, I configured A to be reachable from outside the network (I don’t want to use relays, so I set up port forwarding). But I don’t want to bother configuring B and C, because they aren’t always on, or they use slower network links (slow WiFi for instance, instead of Gigabit ethernet for A), so I have no reason to use B or C instead of A to sync with D.
Now you may say the followings :
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Q: Since B and C aren’t accessible out of your network, and you don’t use relays, they won’t ever be able to connect to D, so why bother ignoring them ?
A: Because sometimes, D being mobile, ends up being physically in the same network as the others, but for the reasons stated above, I want it to use only A to sync.
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Q: Why not just pause B and C on D, so that they are never used ?
A: That’s what I’ll end up doing for now, but that’s not very clean : since D will never sync directly with B or C, why would I want them to appear on D at all ?
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Q: Why not just remove the introducer flag from D all together ?
A: I still want to be able to benefit from the introducer feature on D. Say I add another folder Y on A, that I share with D and a new device E, and that D and E are most of the time in the same location (different from A) : I’d like D to be able to sync to E directly, instead of going through A. Therefore, I’d like E to be introduced to D by A, and I don’t want to ignore it (as opposed to B and C).
