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Hi.Hopefully someone can help me here.I have a Sweex LC000070 router and Motorola SB4200 cable modem.My problem is this.Since about the middle of last week i have had an unknown MAC address appearing in my router logs.Usually this just dissappears after a while but i have switched channels and even done a hard reset on my router,changed SSID etc and the MAC address still appears.Can anyone help please?
From what you've posted, first guess would be one of your neighbours poaching your broadband.
Do you have an example of the log?
What security are you using on the wireless connection? Remember most routers don't have any enabled by default. You mention changing the SSID, but not changing the encryption settings.
I am using MAC filtering and WPA-PSK with AES encryption.The MAC address is getting blocked but it is just annoying to see all the connection attempts filling up my log.What i can't figure out though is that the MAC address is not one shown as nearby available networks if i perform a scan.
So long as the MAC address is being blocked I wouldn't worry about it. Chances are it's a wireless enabled machine nearby without a permanent profile set so it scans for all available wireless networks but gets booted by the MAC filtering. The only thing that might prevent it is hiding the SSID.
I have tried hiding the SSID but the attempts still appear.I also put the MAC address in the filtering table and set to allow it to connect,set the DHCP client scope for one more address and it still brought up blocked for that MAC address in the log???
You are seeing a wireless device that's discovering your SSID. If its a PC running something like netstumbler it doesn't matter that you've hidden you SSID it will find it anyway.
As long as you are using MAC Filtering and WPA2 encryption they will find it very hard to get onto your network.
I wouldn't worry about it. Just check your logs every now and again to make sure they still can't get in
If it's someone with NetStumbler or similar, probably. If it's just a PC doing it without the user knowing, probably not. As Badger says, the time to worry is if they get past that an get an IP address!
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.So hopefully after a while they will give up? 