Windows Network Map Software?

Jubei

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Dec 22, 2007
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I found out tonight that somebody was able to leech of my wireless.

Anybody know of a program (preferably free or low cost) that will show me what all is connected to my network? I want something that can, at a glance, let me know what's going on with my network. It would be nice to be able to do this without having to log into my router.

I'm not looking to sniff packets or anything like that - just get a quick heads up if anybody is doing something that they shouldn't.
 
I believe the answer is no, unless the software could access the firmware of your router, which would involve logging in. It would need to access the firmware of your router because only the router would know what it is connected to it, and your computer doesn't since your computer only handles the connection from it to the router, not from the router to other devices. That's why to control that part you have to log into the router's web interface on the firmware. I'm sure there could be a native GUI interface to access the firmware of some routers but there is different firmware for every router (unless you use dd-wrt or tomato) which would make it hard to write such an application. Note that I am assuming all of this but it seems to be of reasonable logic.

Why don't you just secure the network with a password? If that person doesn't know the password they can't get in.
 
It's secured (I think).

I noticed a HUGE uptick in usage according to Comcast tonight. I normally pull between 20-50GB a month. Last month it said I used 96GB and so far this month it said I've used 86GB. There's NO way - I haven't use a torrent client in a few months, the only game I've downloaded was less than 100MB, streaming Netflix use is the same as prior months. No malware found on any of the machines.

When I looked at my logs, I noticed a machine that was named almost the same as my desktop. When I checked my computers MAC address it was different than this other computer's. I changed my SSID, turned off SSID broadcasting, changed the channel, changed the password, reserved the IP of all 6 of my network devices, capped the dynamic IP range to the six machines, turned on MAC filtering (not sure why it was off - I swore I had it on before), tuned off remote admin, changed the router's password (it was not on the default before), manually kicked all the machines off, rebooted and made sure everything could connect again.

Have a missed anything?
 
Jubei,
If you turn on MAC filtering, be sure to put a white list up of the MAC id's you want to allow to connect. If the intruders MAC id isn't on the list, he'll be extremely hard pressed to get in.
 
Yes, I have MAC filtering set up as a white list. I made sure that the MAC addresses that were allowed were actually the machines I own.

What concerns me is that whoever was able to leech off my network was able to do so in the first place.
 
Question for anyone who may know (it's related to the thread)...

Is it possible to bypass the router's "protection" (i.e. WPA/MAC filter) by bridging a connection to a laptop that is already fully connected to the router?


I ask because:
It's just a long-shot guess that one of the laptops currently connected could have a bridged connection enabled and the intruder is using it.


It's just a question/guess.
 
It is possible, but not the case here. I just checked to make sure that there were no bridged connections on the laptop.

The six devices are:
2 Desktops running ethernet
1 Laptop on wifi
1 iPhone on wifi
1 Wii on wifi
1 Sony Bluray player on wifi

I doubt anybody could hack the Wii or Bluray player without physical access and the laptop lives at home - nobody except the wife and I have used it.
 
If possible, verify that every device connected is in fact yours and the MAC address associated with them is correct. Change your router's username & password to something very sophisticated so it will require A LOT of sniffing to even get an idea as to what it might be.

I personally use dd-wrt as my router's firmware as it gives me greater control over things when compared to stock firmware. It might be something to think of if you're comfortable doing something like that.
 

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