As standard, all routers have a unique Wi-Fi password these days, and it’s virtually impossible to hack. The chances of a neighbour or even someone malicious being connected to your Wi-Fi are extremely slim, unless you don’t have a password for it. The names in the list can help you narrow it down, and some routers – my Smart Hub included – allow you to filter the list by only those that are currently connected.Įven if you only have a handful of Wi-Fi devices, that list will be populated by your old devices that you may have upgraded, or friends’ devices which you’ve allowed to connect when they were visiting, so it’s worth looking for this option so you can find unknown devices that are connected right now. How to identify an unknown device on your network The ones beginning ‘amazon-‘ are more helpful, but could be any Amazon device: an Echo, Fire tablet or Fire TV. This is what unknown means: the device won’t necessarily be called ‘unknown’ but you won’t be able to identify what it is.Īs you can see from this image, some of the friendly names are simply IP addresses, which isn’t helpful. What you’ll see instead is its IP address and MAC address, plus a ‘name’ which may or may not contain any hints as to what the device is. You’ll probably see a lot of unknown devices because the friendly name (such as Jim’s iPhone) either doesn’t exist or isn’t picked up by your router. When you’re looking through the list, bear in mind that it works like a visitor’s book: many of the devices will have connected in the past, but not be connected right now. I have a BT Smart Hub, so can see the list of connected devices on the home page without having to log in. Press Enter and, assuming you have the correct address, you’ll see your router’s web page. An example of a router’s IP address is 192.168.0.1 and you’d type it in just like that with nothing else. Once you have that address, enter it into your web browser’s address bar – the top one, not the Google search box which appears lower down the page. Essentially, though, you need to know the IP address of the router which you should be able to get from any device connected to it, such as your laptop or phone. Simply logging in to a router can be a challenge, which is why we’ve provided a step-by-step guide. Whatever your setup, you need to log into the device that supplies your Wi-Fi and have a look in its menus to find a list of connected devices. In most cases that is your broadband router, but it could also be a mesh Wi-Fi system, a Wi-Fi extender or booster. If you’re reading this and wondering how you’d even know if an ‘unknown’ device is connecting to your Wi-Fi, the answer lies in your internet router or whichever device provides you with Wi-Fi.

Unknown device connected to router