Who Is My Wifi
Networx is a utility which may be able to determine and show you how much network traffic is going through your router to each computer. Unlike Network Monitor, it installs on each computer and generally reads what each computer on the network is doing. In your case, your friend is not part of your network, just using your connection. My WiFi network is password protected but still there could be a chance that neighbours crack it and could use my WiFi for free. For this reason I would like to know is there is any tool to inspect the log of the WiFi router in order to know which computers are connecting to it.
Ever run into a situation where you needed to quickly find out what devices were connected to your wireless network? I recently had a neighborhood get-together and a lot of the kids asked to connect their phones to my WiFi network. Unfortunately, I didn’t enable the guest network in time and so I had to give them the credentials to my main network.
Sometime later I realized one or two of the kids would be standing near my house playing on their phones. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, but then it dawned on me that they were probably using my WiFi to do some Internet browsing they probably couldn’t do at home.
In this article, I’ll show you the different ways you can view the devices connected to your network. Also, you should probably invest some time in learning how to setup a guest wireless network, if you don’t already have one.
Log into Router
The best way, but not necessarily the easiest, is to check your wireless router. It’s the device that probably gives out all the IP addresses on your network, so it will have the definitive list of devices connected, either wired or wireless.
First, you’ll have to determine the IP address of your wireless router. Most routers have a default IP address of 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. Once you have that info, log into the router and start browsing through the various tabs. If you don’t remember your router username and password, it’s probably a good time to reset the router, log into the router using default credentials and setup it up again.
Depending on your router, the information about connected devices could be listed under many different headings. For example, on my Verizon router, there is a section called My Network that shows all connected devices.
On my Netgear router, the listing is under a menu option called Attached Devices.
For Linksys, you have to click on a button called DHCP Clients table. For xfinity routers, it’s under the Connected Devices section. For D-Link routers, you go to Wireless and then click on Status. For TP-Link routers, you click on DHCP and then DHCP Clients List. Obviously, there are too many to mention here, but the list is somewhere in that interface. Just keep clicking around till you find it.
Depending on your router, the amount of information you get will vary wildly. Mostly, you need the IP address and host name. Having a bunch of IP addresses and MAC addresses really isn’t all that helpful. If you don’t see host names, try using a network scanner, which I talk about next.
Scan Network
The next option is to scan your network and hopefully get some info that way. I already wrote a post on how to scan your network, so make sure to read that first. In that article, I wrote about SoftPerfect network scanner, which is pretty good.
Another really good one that I use more often now is Advanced IP Scanner. It’s free, easy to use and doesn’t even have to be installed if you don’t want. It also gives you a lot of detailed information about each device, which makes it much easier to figure out whether the device is a valid one or not.
Once you install the program, just open it and click the Scan button. By default, it should automatically determine your network range, but if not, you can manually type it in. It’ll take a few minutes to scan and you’ll see the output as shown above.
Any device that has a web interface will have a little arrow that you can click on at the far left under the Status column. This means you can go to the web browser and type in the IP address.
It’ll also automatically show you any network shares on the local LAN. This is a great way to make sure you aren’t accidentality sharing that should be private. The first time I ran this, I didn’t realize a couple of my Windows 10 PCs were automatically sharing the Documents, Music and several other folders.
You can also rename the devices, save the list and use it as a baseline for future scans. If you see new devices that you haven’t named, you can check to make sure they are valid. Those are two simple ways to check what devices are connected to your router. The harder part is going through each one, finding the device, and making sure it’s supposed to be connected. If you have any questions, post a comment. Enjoy!
WiFi technology is everywhere these days and it seems almost every electronic device around has a wireless network connection of some sort. Laptops, tablets, smartphones, digital cameras, printers, gaming consoles, smart watches and many other devices can connect to each other or the internet through a WiFi connection. But a wireless network setup also presents its own set of problems when it comes to your own home network and the devices attached to it.
Naturally, setting up your own WiFi network with adequate protection like WPA2 and a strong password is vital, but that still doesn’t mean people you don’t know about aren’t using your network without your knowledge. It’s entirely possible friends, neighbors or family members have shared the WiFi credentials with others and people you don’t even know could have access to your network and your shared files. Even though many routers have additional security measures such as MAC address filtering, these might not be configured or someone has circumvented them.
A lot of modern routers will give you a list of the wired and wireless devices making a connection to the network, but some do not and some people wouldn’t actually know how to find that information. Another simple way is using a tool to get the list of connected devices, here’s 5 for you to try out.
1. Wireless Network WatcherWireless Network Watcher is by Nir Sofer and is another one of his many utilities that simply does what it says on the tin. The good thing is it requires no setting up of IP address ranges and starts scanning your main network adapter automatically for connected devices. If you wish to scan a different adapter or a custom IP address range, use the Advanced Options by pressing F9.
Scanning the IP range is fast and only takes a few seconds, after which you get information like IP, device name, MAC address, adapter manufacturer, detection count and activity state. While Wireless Network Watcher is open a background scan continuously looks through the IP range to detect new and disconnected devices, you can set a tray balloon and audio warning when devices are detected or disconnected. The background scan interval can be set in seconds through the Advanced Options windows (F9). A portable or installer version is available.
Download Wireless Network Watcher
2. SoftPerfect WiFi Guard
WiFi Guard is like a cutdown and more basic version of the excellent SoftPerfect Network Scanner which is more suited just for detecting unknown or unauthorized network connections. This tool will scan your network for connected devices and rescan every xx minutes, popping up a message if an unknown connection has been found.
If you have more than one active network adapter the program will popup the settings window on launch to select the adapter you want to scan, otherwise you will be taken to the main window where pressing Scan Now will detect all devices connected to the network. For every red marked connection you know is authorized, double click on it and tick the “I know this computer or device” box, that will tell the program to ignore the device on rescans as it’s known. While running or minimized WiFi Guard will rescan between 0 and 60 minutes (default is 30 mins) and popup a message on screen if a new unknown device has been detected.
As mentioned above, there is Softperfect Network Scanner which is one of the most comprehensive scanning and administration tools of its type. It can also be used for scanning and identifying wireless connections but it won’t scan every number of minutes and warn you on unknown connections. Both WiFi Guard and Network Scanner have portable and installer versions.
Download Softperfect WiFi Guard
3. Advanced IP Scanner
This is an all round network administration tool that can do a number of tasks in addition to scanning your network for connections. There’s also remote options to Wake-on-LAN and shutdown, connect via HTTP/FTP as well as remote control with Remote Desktop and Radmin. Of course, those features are unnecessary for simply scanning your network for wireless connections.
By default Advanced IP Scanner will set the address ranges for all connections on the computer, only the range that the WiFi connections are likely to be on will need to be scanned, such as 192.168.0.1 – 192.168.0.254. If you only have one active connection, there’s no need to touch the IP range. After the scan, all connections will show along with the wireless device manufacturer, MAC address and its name. Advanced IP Scanner doesn’t have to be installed and the option to run it as portable can be selected when running the setup executable.
Download Advanced IP Scanner
4. Angry IP Scanner
Angry IP Scanner is a multi platform tool that works on Mac and Linux as well because it’s Java based, this will obviously mean the Java Runtime Environment needs to be installed on your computer. The tool simply pings every IP address in the selected range for a response and then displays the result along with the information you ask for in the Fetchers window.
To select a range of addresses to scan, enter them yourself or click the IP button and select the correct network adapter. Then click the drop down to its right to choose the range, /26 will scan up to 63, /24 will scan up to 255 and etc. You can also choose our own IP list text file if you have a complicated setup. The scanning process is quite fast because the program scans using multiple threads. To see the result of all scanned addresses, go to Tools > Preferences > Display and choose “All scanned hosts”, this will reveal other possibly connected devices that are not responding to pings. Portable and installer versions are available.
Download Angry IP ScannerAge of empire hd edition download free.
5. Who Is On My WiFi
What Is My Wifi Ip Address
This tool is a little different from the others because its main task is to identify the computers on your network and warn you when unknown or unidentified connections are made. Unfortunately one of its most useful functions of blocking unknown or suspicious connections is only available if you sign up for a paid subscription, plans start at a slightly steep $9.95 per month. The free version however, still lets you scan and find devices on your network.
The first thing required is to configure the address range to scan from the default by clicking the Settings button and entering the the range you need for your network, such as 192.168.0.1-254. If you are not sure go to the Diagnostic tab in Settings and click “Detect IP Ranges” to see what your network is currently using. Then run a scan and devices on the network will be identified. Select all known connections in turn and set their state to KNOWN from the drop down, then optionally give each a description.
If you keep Who Is On My WiFi running in the background it pops up a visual and audible message when an unknown network device is detected, by default it will scan every 5 minutes although you can change this time to between 2 and 10 minutes in the settings. Make sure to close Who Is On My WiFi from the tray icon if you don’t wish to use the monitoring feature.
Download Who Is On My WiFi
Note: We did test a few other network scanning tools called LanSpy and Lizardsystems Network Scanner but they were quite inconsistent in detecting wireless networks. Sometimes they would show up, sometimes they would be missing even though the tools in our list had no such difficulty. If you want to use those tools to search for wireless connections, do so with caution.
You might also like:
5 Tools to Scan Connected Computers on the Local Network and Find Shared Folders8 WiFi Scanners to Discover Hidden Wireless Networks5 Tools To Monitor Your Wireless Network Signal Strength4 Ways to Automatically Disable Wireless Network Connection when Local Area Connection is Enabled6 Ways to Import and Export Wireless Network Profile SettingsGlad I found this! At the apartments where I live, we’ve been having an ongoing issue with people (mostly teenagers) hanging around the buildings and using apps that let their devices connect to other people’s wifi. Now we don’t have to worry about if there are unknown devices connected to our internet. Thank you!
ReplyThank you …For posting a valuable Information…Even an unknown person can easily understand by seeing this article …….Wireless Network Watcher is very useful and simple one to see others using our wifi ntework……….
ReplyHelpful article. This really important for all the users to know who using their wifi. Otherwise, they will lost their valuable data. Your article is excellent. Thanks fr sharing.
ReplyYou can use a program called “fing” it is available for smartphones, tablets, computers etc.
It not only scans and identifies devices but it also has scanning options for device services
Well I can see everything via router settings.
I can even limit accounts, log them off, change their speed
turn networks off and different times, example my
daughters will go off between 21:00-06:00.
Software is ok and saves time. Thanks for it.
ReplyNice update. I’m quite a big follower of your posts. I also work around to find the solution but not like you (haha).
ReplyIn addition to having MAC filtering + WPA2 security enabled on my router, I have flashed it using DD-WRT as well. The DD-WRT interface shows at a glance all DHCP clients that have been assigned IP addresses
Reply
Raymond,
Thank you! Now I will know who’s hacking on my router. =)
Couldn’t have been more easy to install and using right now. Thank you for the great information and link to the Wireless Network Watcher by Nir Sofer!
ReplyNirsoft always has great and useful tools. I love learning about new ones through your blog.
Replywow a BIG thanks to your article raymond now I can detect who illegally uses our Wifi.
Honestly i’m not expecting an article respond from this site about my network problem question and I’m so happy.
Thanks for the Big Help.
(I’ll try it as soon as possible)
ReplyThank you very much. Useful info.
ReplyThanks Raymond.
ReplyThanks Raymond! A very useful app to have with me!
Wh1t3c0d3r
ReplyThank you very much for sharing this software !
ReplyUseful info thanks Raymond
ReplyNo self-respecting geek would ever be without ALL of NirSoft’s freeware utilities…
…and those by Sysinternals, too.
And the hands-down best tool for managing/using those is this freeware badboy…
kls-soft.com/wscc/index.php
Hope the helps.
_____________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Thank you very much
ReplyYou don’t need software for this. Every router will display connected devices to your network in it’s logs .
ReplyReally helpful – thanks :)
Replynice info ray,thanks
Replynice software , thanks
ReplyThank you Raymond
ReplyVery useful share thanks …
ReplyGood post.
Thanks Ray
Reply