How do I see if someone is using my internet connection?

jdbic · January 26th, 2006, 07:39 PM

I have a router that is wired and wireless-wrt54g- . How can I tell if someone is using my connection? All the computers in the network are wired, but the laptop is not . The laptop tells where it can get a connection to the internet , each of my neighbors. I want my desktop to tell me who has a connection to my router . Hope I explained or asked correctly.

Mickwish · January 26th, 2006, 07:45 PM

Your router should have a control panel (probably a webpage) that should show you any connected PC's. I'm not familiar with that model router myself, but if you check the manual it should tell you what to look for.

Your wireless should be AT LEAST protected by an encryption key (like WEP, WPA, PSK, etc). If you really want to keep the nosy neighbours out, try setting MAC addresses, disabling DHCP and only allowing set IP addresses to connect.

Cheers
Mick

Detritus · January 26th, 2006, 07:45 PM

If you check the DHCP log of your router the mac address of everyone who has connected since the last router reboot should be listed... now that list isn't guaranteed for various reasons, but at least it's a start. Are you using encryption? MAC filtering?

**Martoch** · January 26th, 2006, 07:59 PM

Same router here.
Log in to your router via http://192.168.1.1
Go to Administration--Log, enable it if it's not already (disabled by default). Click on either incoming or outgoing log to view the contents.

jdbic · January 26th, 2006, 09:40 PM

OK ,
The router page doesn't load correctly. There are no boxes to click that would bring me to , say for example, administration or security settings. How can I fix that?

Mickwish · January 26th, 2006, 09:51 PM

Sounds like a browser issue to me. Do you have cookies/javascript disabled? The page may need them.

Cheers
Mick

jdbic · January 26th, 2006, 10:05 PM

I'm not sure about the cookies/javascript. How do I check them?

Mickwish · January 26th, 2006, 10:16 PM

If you are using IE, go to Tools: Internet options and check your Privacy tab You can change cookie handling and java options in there.

Cheers
Mick

jdbic · January 26th, 2006, 10:34 PM

Thanks i tried but that didn't help. I'll try again tommorrow, I need to get some sleep.

johnnyis42 · January 27th, 2006, 03:37 PM

do you want to tell if someone else is using it, or do you want to prevent others from using it?

an easy way someone can hide themselves from DHCP is to just set themselves a static IP address valid for the router's subnet. then they never get logged in the DHCP lease log.

the wireless portion of the router may have a list of currently connected MAC addresses, and that will tell you exactly who is associated with your access point. usually the router will associate the machine's netbios name with the mac as well, so that would be a big tip off provided the anonymous machine is not blocking netbios traffic.

if you are looking to filter out MAC addresses, the implimentation that WiFi (802.11b/g) uses to filter MAC actually advertises which MAC addresses it allows, allowing anyone to simply fake their own MAC address to match that address. if the router uses it's own network level filtering it is much more secure.