Nowadays it’s easy for people to hack into any Wi-Fi network and connect without even the user knowing. Devices such as phones, tablets, consoles etc. could be connected to your Wi-Fi under your nose and using your bandwidth without you even realizing it.
Following are the ways and precautions through which you can not only monitor connected devices, but also make sure that your Wi-Fi is secure and safe from prying intruders.
The best way to see who’s connected to your Wifi is by using your Router’s web interface, which will have various ways of telling you who’s connected and how much bandwidth is being used. You can access the web interface using the default IP or check using run ipconfig/all command in Command Prompt.
Once you’ve logged into the interface, there will be various options that you’ll have to go through, before you find an option such as “connected devices” or “DHCP clients”. Under this list, you will see a range of connected devices being distinguished on the basis of MAC addresses. You can set names on your devices in order to specify which device is connected and which is yours.
However, this isn’t fool proof and sometimes hackers can use static IPs in order to stay hidden. And in case you see a device connected that you believe isn’t yours, you can change the security key or password.
In case your router does not have this feature, you can also use various software in order to monitor activity on your network. Lastly, you can also just increase the security on your network so that it’s harder for strangers to hack into. For example, security protocols such as the WPA and WEP are older and less secure as compared to WPA2.
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