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

Odd thing happened

Mayhem

Mayhem

Android Expert
I opened Network on my Windows 8 laptop and a listing appeared for a Linksys WRT160N complete with MAC address.

I don't own anything from LinkSys.

I refreshed the view and it disappeared.

I do have multiple other devices on the network but the only things that are powered on right now are my laptop, my wife's laptop, a DLink NAS and a Netgear range extender. My primary router is also a Netgear.

I'm using WPA2 with a 13 character passphrase that's a combination of letters and numbers.

Anyone ever see something like this happen before?

I'm thinking of switching to using whitelisting now too...
 
Mayhem said:
I opened Network on my Windows 8 laptop and a listing appeared for a Linksys WRT160N complete with MAC address.

I don't own anything from LinkSys.

I refreshed the view and it disappeared.

I do have multiple other devices on the network but the only things that are powered on right now are my laptop, my wife's laptop, a DLink NAS and a Netgear range extender. My primary router is also a Netgear.

I'm using WPA2 with a 13 character passphrase that's a combination of letters and numbers.

Anyone ever see something like this happen before?

I'm thinking of switching to using whitelisting now too...
Click to expand...

Run this and see if you see anything funky on your home network.

Angry IP Scanner : Home - IP and Port Scanner Tool for Analyzing Networks
 
you could be picking up a neighbor's router somewhere with an extremely weak signal. there's a couple i see come and go at Mom's, named TrendNet and Mary Shaffer's network. if they are unnamed they just use the branding of the router.
 
It's more than likely showing the SSIDs of other WiFi routers that are within range, and many people never change the default Linksys or whatever. Android does it as well in the WiFi settings, even though it might never connect to those routers and is already connected to a network. I'm always seeing TP-Link routers wherever I go.
 
Thing is, I've never seen a router appear in what is essentially Network Neighborhood. And have never seen an SSID appear there either. Looking at the list of SSIDs being broadcast, none have the name LinkSys.

If there was some program that would analyze the broadcasting SSIDs and could tell what hardware was being used, I'd be interested to know.

I ran Angry IP Scanner and see 5 addresses, but only two have hostnames.
 
Network Neighborhood is part of file/print sharing in Windows. unless you actually connect to the ghost network you won't see it inside that window.

My router still has its default name 'NETGEAR73'. it's not unusual for random 'ghost' routers to come and go when you are looking at the list of available networks. it is also not unusual for those same ghost networks to trigger an Android device's 'wifi available' ping. that is why i turned that annoyance off. having any type of security won't keep those networks from displaying. a ton of random connections that come and go where i live have security enabled, but they still broadcast their SSIDs
 
Mayhem said:
Thing is, I've never seen a router appear in what is essentially Network Neighborhood. And have never seen an SSID appear there either. Looking at the list of SSIDs being broadcast, none have the name LinkSys.

If there was some program that would analyze the broadcasting SSIDs and could tell what hardware was being used, I'd be interested to know.

I ran Angry IP Scanner and see 5 addresses, but only two have hostnames.
Click to expand...

inSSIDer shows more info about the wireless networks around you (including mac addresses). Pretty sure there's an app too. If I wasn't mobile at the moment, I'd give links
 
nickdalzell said:
you could be picking up a neighbor's router somewhere with an extremely weak signal. there's a couple i see come and go at Mom's, named TrendNet and Mary Shaffer's network. if they are unnamed they just use the branding of the router.
Click to expand...

This was actually the case. It popped up again and I got a screenshot with the MAC address. inSSIDer showed which WAP in my area that MAC belonged to. I'd completely forgotten about inSSIDer.

It's just weird that it shows up inside Network as a physical device (icon and everything) and not just showing up in the list of available WAPs.

It's Windows 8 - go figure.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom