How can I find out if anyone nearby is connected to my home's wireless network?

Question

Thanks!

Answer 1

G'day,

This is my approach. Rather than try to 'sniff' network activities or check the MAC address (you might deleted yours instead of someone else's), why don't you just change the access password? This will definitely disconnect any previous connections. You will need to re-enter the new password to re-connect, but minor inconvenience.

Please make sure that you are using WPA encryption instead of WEP. It is more secure and easier to remember anyway, since you can enter pretty much anything that comes in mind. With WEP, you have to remember hexadecimal counts.

Hope this helps. Good luck!!

Answer 2

Basically: Turn it off. Then, look outside and listen through the walls and determine it that way.

If you have neighbors within 300 ft of your wireless connection they could connect. If the signal is passing through walls, floors, and ceilings it is weakend. They would have to be within the two hundred to three hundred foot area to get a good signal.

If you have it set up in a house and want to keep it hidden; turn on your "Hide my SSID" function, so the usual War Drivers in that area can't see it. Give it a Unique Username: Use the WPA security setting to Password Protect. As long as your not a neigbhor to any MIT wanna be's you should be safe as soon as you figure out how to hide your SSID.

Just a thought. Hide your SSID, then rename username, add WPA as your security set up, and give it a new long 64 bit password. Then even if your hide my SSID should fail, no one short of your mastermind from the Michigan Institute of Technology is going to figure it out.

If you are really interested in seeing if your neighbors, or war drivers are connecting, just, look out the window after you shut off the modem and see how many empty parking spaces open up the lot.

Like if your in college and your next door neighbors start crying because they lost their connection in the middle of something. That's real tell tale sign.

Answer 3

The answer above will not necessarily work, depending upon how the wireless network traffic is switched.

What you actually want to do is to go into the wireless router/access point's administrative interface, and look at the "log" or "wireless" section. It will show all of the computers connected to your network by MAC address, and possibly by name.

Answer 4

Well, you could log into your router and look at attach devices and if you find a device that you don't recognize, then someone is connected to your network.
You could boot that person off by changing the network key.

Answer 5

Install a packet sniffer such as Snort to monitor network traffic.

Answer 6

Make sure your wireless is secure by using a password - this will make them have to know your password in order to use it. If you don't have your wireless secured, they can use it, but you can't tell who is using it.

Also- if you notice your bandwidth go down, someone could be using yours.

Answer 7

on th eothers computers that are connected open the network connection on properties check their settings do same manually on your laptop