• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

How Do I change my wireless name?

R

Reap

Member
So how do I change the name of my wireless device? My house uses approx. 5 wireless devices (laptops and other Android phones). I want to make sure it's only my family and I that are on my wireless network so I would like to give each android device a name. For example when you connect to a Homegroup in Windows 7 you have to name your PC in order to see whose computer is whose. So does anyone know how to rename an android device because my Android deivce just says "new host" when I check my router connections
 
I think for all devices..it is a mac address that is being used. Names are just for you to see. the network uses mac address; which is hardcoded and unique.

You can change the name on computers..
I have not seen a way to set the phone's name. I think it is the mac address/MEID/IMSI that will be shown. you can see this ..
homescreen>menu>settings>about phone >phone identity.

thats all I got...
 
First, use strong passwords and change them occasionally. Don't have any open or guest accounts and use WPA2, not WEP and you shouldn't have any issues with neighbors.

From what I can see in the DHCP client table of the router, it appends a hexadecimal string to "android_" although it doesn't look to be tied to either the MAC address or the IMEI of the phone. I don't know of a way to change that.
 
If you are using a router, you might be able to restrict access by using a MAC lock (nothing to do with Apple). You will need to find out the MAC address of your devices and input it into your router. I can see the MAC address of the devices connected to my Netgear router, so that's easy.

It's not foolproof though. MAC address can be faked. I have done it before.
 
From what I can tell, Android doesn't support hostnames directly. As lunatic said, it applies android with a hexadecimal ID. From what I can tell, this only applies to devices with Android 2.2 and up. None of our 2.1 phones have a hostname.
 
On my HTC Sensation 4G running android 2.3.3 it uses

Android_<insert IMEI here>

where <insert IMEI here> is replaced by the phone's IMEI
 
snapper.fishes said:
If you are using a router, you might be able to restrict access by using a MAC lock (nothing to do with Apple). You will need to find out the MAC address of your devices and input it into your router. I can see the MAC address of the devices connected to my Netgear router, so that's easy.

It's not foolproof though. MAC address can be faked. I have done it before.
Click to expand...

All wireless routers I have used (been using them since 2001) allow for mac address filtering. Even the old ones would let you choose which currently connected mac addresses are allowed when you turn on filtering. So you could make sure everything is connected and enable filtering, select the allowed addresses and be good to go. I do this in my house and it only takes a few minutes once you get used to it (and I have blue ray player, 6 laptops, 2 Wii's, XBox 360, and 6 android devices):eek:.

This combined with lunatic59's suggestion about encryption, secure passwords, occasional changes, etc. will make your network pretty secure.

As a side note to secure passwords, you can create secure passwords out of things that are easily remembered by you. Such as taking a favorite cars name and typing it in with your fingers shifted one or two keys to the left or right (e.g. GTO shifted two letters to the left --> DEU). Obviously, you would chose something greater than 3 characters, generally 8 or more is best.

Another technique I use is symbols, which to some seem confusing to remember. Here is a simple way to integrate symbols in a password. Let's say your favorite car is a 1969 Dodge Charger (sorry, I'm a Dukes of Hazzard fan:)) you could simply hold the shift key when you type some or all of the numbers. Using all of the numbers would result in !(^( Dodge Charger. Which if you check in any password strength measurer (not a word, but you know what I mean;)) it will rate as strong.

Again, these are ways to make extremely strong passwords out of simple to remember terms for you. Also remember if you combine two of these methods, shift keys and symbols, the password strength increase is exponential. In some cases you can keep your same password and change technique.

I know this is not a security blog, but I thought this might be useful information for some.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom