async_ping returns results for devices that are not on wifi network

[thomasdelaet]

I have a bit of a weird problem. I'm using icmplib through home assistant. There are occasionally devices that I know for a fact are turned off or not even present in my house that return positive results. I looked at the code but have no clue what could be the cause of this. This occurs randomly across different devices. See below for an example entry in home assistant logs with debug turned on:

2024-12-13 21:19:08.158 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.ping.coordinator] Finished fetching Ping 192.168.2.28 data in 4.025 seconds (success: True)
2024-12-13 21:19:08.206 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.ping.helpers] async_ping returned: reachable=True sent=5 received=2

This specific device is a phone of a friend which is for sure not on my wifi network.

Any clues on where to look? I use ping sensors to determine who is in the house and have automations linked to that so would like to help get this fixed :-). I tried also configuring home assistant to not use icmplib but use ping command line and then problem doesn't occur which makes me think that it has something to do with icmplib or how home assistant is calling icmplib. Any clues on where to look would be really appreciated!

Full disclosure: I have a large number of devices on my network and as a consequence ping integrations configured (259). Home assistant calls async_ping every 30 seconds for each of those devices. Not sure if that could have something to do with it. I already lowered the amount of pings from 20 to 5 and problem seems to be less but doesn't go entirely away.

Thanks for any help!

[thomasdelaet]

@ValentinBELYN any ideas? happy to help to further debug/fix but would be good to have some lead on where to look