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Forum Discussion
Orbi 78 - Unowned devices on network...
I logged on my router and found two strange devices on the network - an Amazon smartspeaker, and an Amazon Fire TV cube. I own neither. In addition, I'm in the middle of 3 acres and no house is close...
EarleSelf wrote:
I logged on my router and found two strange devices on the network - an Amazon smartspeaker, and an Amazon Fire TV cube. I own neither. In addition, I'm in the middle of 3 acres and no house is closer than 450' or so. I did block access. Is there any more I can do?
Netgear includes software in the router that attempts to discover what devices are, mostly by lookiing at the hardware MAC address of the network adapter (wired or wireless). They have a version of the Fing app buried in the Orbi firmware. This process is not always correct.
You can check for yourself by entering the reported MAC address into a web site that uses a manufacturer database, such as these:
https://www.wireshark.org/tools/oui-lookup.html
The most recent firmware for Apple iOS, Android OS, and laptops has a feature that creates 'anonymous' WiFi MAC addresses in place of the actual hardware MAC address. Needless to say, this wreaks havoc with programs that attempt to guess what something is from the MAC address. Now that you have blocked these two devices, you might want to be alert for something in the house that has stopped working.
Thanks. I've been on the lookout, assuming a possible misidentification. It happens my attached Arlo camera network is not working, at least the recordings on their server aren't accessible. This may be an independent problem, though. You'd think one Netgear product would be able to accurately ID a product formerly produced by a division of Netgear. Also, I believe I'd lost contact with Arlo's servers before I blocked access to the two unknown devices. I've unblocked them as a test and I still can't access Arlo's servers, so I think that's a separate problem. I will try the two tools you posted...
The Arlo problem was independent. They're back up. Adding to my prior remark, I've had good luck with the Orbi and two satellites, meshed, but they go up only to 866. Since I'm on Google Fiber's 1 gig service now, that's fine. However, I'm about to step up to the 2 gig and that will require that I use their 2 gig router and one or two satellites. It will also require reinstallation of all 20 or so devices, so it should smoke out any freeloaders...
Every time I install a new WiFi system, I give it exactly the same WiFi SSID/password as the one being replaced:
- All devices connect automatically to the new system without any work on my part, and
- If I decide to "go back" and reinstall the previous WiFi system, all devices automatically connect to it.
I shudder to think about changing WiFi SSID/password.
Excellent idea! IDK why I hadn't thought of it. I'm sure Google's router will have them resettable. There are six Chromecasts alone, with that miserable hunt and peck method of entering a password...