How do I detect someone is using my wireless internet equipment?
As others have indicated, you may be able to determine IF anyone is stealing your bandwidth, but determining WHO is another story. It also has no effect on what will happen tomorrow, or the next ten minutes, for that matter. Instead, why not harden your network before you need to? Here are my recommendations. Because routers differ as to details, I can’t be specific about how to accomplish these steps, but they’re almost all done from within the router’s administration pages. 1. Change your SSID (Network Name) from the default. Hackers know that routers come with default SSIDs and look for them. 2. Turn off the SSID broadcast from the router. There’s no need to advertise your network’s presence. You’re not running a hotspot; everyone who should be on your network should know its name. 3. Set up encryption with an encryption key. The longer, the better. 4. Limit access to only the computers you want on the network via MAC filtering. (MAC refers to unique NIC (Network Interface Card) add
