advertisement


Network device names how can I find out what is what …..help please!

trumpetman

trumpetman

pfm Member
Network device names …..help please!
Using BT Smart hub 2 and three wifi booster dish thingies

My problem

I need to put some parental and wifi controls on the network, BUT I am having difficulty in identifying which device is what. I don’t want to mess up devices that do streaming duties…. Hope this make sense. Any tips on how I could do this please? Thanks
 
I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but my recommendation would be to use a 3rd party router.

Having used ISP routers from BT and Vodafone, I suspect the interface will be crap and one of many reasons I use a 3rd party router. Certainly, the content management on both was pretty blunt and impossible to configure with any precision.

On my Asus router, if I select client map and click on ‘view list’ I get a list of everything that’s connected to the router and the client names are all self explanatory. Content management is done via MAC address and can be as granular as you want it to be.

On the bt router interface, login as an admin, click on LAN and there should be an option to view all devices which can be filtered on active status. Client names should correspond to device type, I’m not sure how the router derives these, others may know, but windows devices are usually displayed by the workgroup device name.
 
Can you log on to your router and see a list of the devices?
If so, turn off the devices you don't want to alter, and see if they go from online client to offline client?
 
You should be able to identify each device by it's mac address. When I had a BT Smart Hub, it did identify all devices connected by wired or WiFi, sometimes by name but mostly mac address. Just Google how to find a device Mac address for each type of device e.g Windows, Android etc. But I don't remember there being much in the way of Parental controls for each device via BT.
 
Turn off all the devices you want to setup parental controls on.

refresh the list on the router.

turn on one device and then change its name once it pops up

refresh the list again

turn on the next device…. and repeat.
 
I'm not quite sure what it is you want to do however the only certain way to identify a computer is by its network adapters MAC address.

I don't know about the HH2 but on my router I can look at the DHCP table and this identifies each connected device by its MAC address and the currently allocated IP address. Some of the LAN devices may self identify in this table. For those that don't and assuming that you are using Windows go to each computer launch a CMD prompt and type ipconfig /all. You'll see a lot of stuff but the one you want will start like this:-
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : RZ608 Wi-Fi 6E 80MHz
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 20-7F-DA-AF-EB-53
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::6930:5687:717b:2ecf%39(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.23(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
You can see from the above that this computer is using WiFi 6 and that adapter has a MAC address 20-7F-DA-AF-EB-53. This will not change as its burnt in and unique for each adapter. The current IP address is 192.168.1.23 but it can change over time unless the HH2 allows you to fix this address to the MAC address. My router lets me do this and I recommend that if you can you also permanently associate the IP and MAC addresses. If not buy a proper router and there are many up for grabs s/h.

True each Windows computer will have a NETBIOS name shown under system but the user can change this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top