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random PC on my network

R

ravikc

Guest
Original poster
Feb 13, 2008
105
0
okay guys let me paint this picture for u

airport extreme base station..connected to a xbox running xbmc...broadcasting a wireless n network that is mac address filtered to three macs - imac, macbook pro, and macpro....utilizing opendns.com in the dns settings...macbook pro and imac are working perfectly fine

on my macpro when i browse the network it shows my imac, laptop, and it has a mysterious PC titled "macintosh-2" ...i cant for the love of me figure out what macintosh-2 is..i pinged the machine and it shows me a an ip of 208.67.219.132...if u traceroute that IP its registered to opendns.com but i have no running apps that link my macpro to that site...

does anyone have any idea what i can do or how i can figure out what this is and get rid of it?...

also im not able to connect to it at all jsut see it and have guest access - should also be noted i can only see it from my macpro not the other machines

please help!! thanks guys
 
doubt it - xbox is off when it shows up

disconnected it as well and it still shows up
 
yup - its still there when the macbook pro, imac, and xbox are disconnected and off

thanks for the help guys...keep it comin
 
if it traceroutes to opendns, could it not be the machine they are using to track your IP address? what are the firewall settings on your macs? if i have it turned on windows pc's do not show up, yet mac's do. try changing firewall settings to see if that makes a difference.
 
Do you have file sharing enabled on the airport extreme as that can cause a random machine to appear which doesn't exist.
 
firewall settings are off - i do all my firewall blocking via the router itself

also - all file sharing is off on the airport extreme


should also be noted that it shows up "randomly" like itll be there for 2-3 hours....disappear....pop back up...etc

please help

thanks guys'
 
Do you have VNC access turned on? That made one of my Macs show up twice in the sidebar, one of them with a PC icon.

System Preferences
Sharing
Screen Sharing
Computer Settings...

uncheck "VNC users may control screen..." and see if it goes away.
 
Can you look in the router information page and see what the MAC address is for the unknown PC?

That would tell you a lot.

Also what kind of internet do you have ? Cable? DSL ?

What's connected directly to the cable/DSL modem ?
 
hey i do have screen sharing enabled - but i have that vnc option unchecked and blank...i tried turning screen sharing off to see if that might have been it ...but its still there

sometimes macintosh-2 renames itself and pops us as "lh-bvbl6g51nt64" - same IP

any ideas?

its really annoying
 
peace - when i open up the dhcp client list..and go look in my router it only shows my mac address for the macs that are on there...so my router doesnt even show that pc connected..its just on the macpro..its like a echo of something...

setup is cable

cable modem connected to airport extreme...xbox connected to airport extreme...all macs are wireless n to the extreme..should be noted i do have a 2nd linksys router connected to the airport extreme broadcasting a secured g network for my iphone

any thoughts? - thanks
 
I get random computers on the network also. I even gone to the extreme of disabling wifi and only using wired connection for a week and it still popped up. I don't get it sometimes.
 
ravikc said:
firewall settings are off - i do all my firewall blocking via the router itself

also - all file sharing is off on the airport extreme


should also be noted that it shows up "randomly" like itll be there for 2-3 hours....disappear....pop back up...etc

please help

thanks guys'
Click to expand...

still sounds like it belongs to opendns, especially as it only pops up every so often. do u have any ports open or forwarding to the macpro on the airport, even though you have the firewall on?
A quick solution would be to turn the on the macpro's firewall, you shouldn't see any windows machines then but your mac's will still show up.

EDIT: does the airport only show MAC addresses for computers that are currently connected? if so the windows machine could quickly pop into your network and disappear again, but the Finder will continue to show it for some reason.
 
the airport extreme does not show the mac address for that pc that keeps popping up...it just shows the mac addys for the macs connected...i only have macs connected to it

i will try the firewall thing too - i agree that it must be something with opendns...

anyone else have any ideas?

i also emailed opendns tech support and all they said was to read this article:

http://www.opendns.com/support/article/148

which does not help and means nothing to me...let me know

thanks guys
 
i have both parallels (winxp) and fusion (vista) installed...however..these systems are showing up when both of fusion and parallels are not being run

any other ideas?
 
ravikc said:
i have both parallels (winxp) and fusion (vista) installed...however..these systems are showing up when both of fusion and parallels are not being run

any other ideas?
Click to expand...

1. try connecting to it and see where it leads.
2. go into your router and find any other information (i.e. MAC address)
 
I wonder if someone in the neighborhood is hopping on your wireless. Shut off all other computer but the one you're on and see if it disappears. Then do the same on another machine. That will rule out each other as the culprit. If it shows up on either machine while the others are off, I bet someone on your street is stealing your wireless.
 
ravikc said:
peace - when i open up the dhcp client list..and go look in my router it only shows my mac address for the macs that are on there...so my router doesnt even show that pc connected..its just on the macpro..its like a echo of something...

setup is cable

cable modem connected to airport extreme...xbox connected to airport extreme...all macs are wireless n to the extreme..should be noted i do have a 2nd linksys router connected to the airport extreme broadcasting a secured g network for my iphone

any thoughts? - thanks
Click to expand...

Whats the MAC address of the 2nd linksys ? That could be the culprit.

Since the the extra linksys is .g only set the AEBS to .N 5Ghz only and remove the extra linksys from any access control list and see if the linksys goes away.
Then you will know.

Also if the extra linksys is connected via ethernet it will always show up in your DHCP list on the AEBS and the access control list won't block a ethernet connection unless you disconnect it and re-boot the AEBS.
 
DoFoT9 said:
1. try connecting to it and see where it leads.
2. go into your router and find any other information (i.e. MAC address)
Click to expand...

checked the router - there are no unknown mac addresses in my client list

everything is accounted for..router..xbox..all three macs etc...
 
krye said:
I wonder if someone in the neighborhood is hopping on your wireless. Shut off all other computer but the one you're on and see if it disappears. Then do the same on another machine. That will rule out each other as the culprit. If it shows up on either machine while the others are off, I bet someone on your street is stealing your wireless.
Click to expand...

unlikely as the ip is an opendns IP for that system

and secondly i have a mac filter enabled on my routers so no one should be able to just hop on
 
Peace said:
Whats the MAC address of the 2nd linksys ? That could be the culprit.

Since the the extra linksys is .g only set the AEBS to .N 5Ghz only and remove the extra linksys from any access control list and see if the linksys goes away.
Then you will know.

Also if the extra linksys is connected via ethernet it will always show up in your DHCP list on the AEBS and the access control list won't block a ethernet connection unless you disconnect it and re-boot the AEBS.
Click to expand...

checked the MAC on the 2nd linksys - its in my dhcp table and accounted for - disconnected it as well to test and the system still shows up on the network

the AEBS is running .N only and disconnected linksys - system still shows up

any ideas?

thanks for all the help hopefully i can figure this **** out soon
 
ravikc said:
okay guys let me paint this picture for u

airport extreme base station..connected to a xbox running xbmc...broadcasting a wireless n network that is mac address filtered to three macs - imac, macbook pro, and macpro....utilizing opendns.com in the dns settings...macbook pro and imac are working perfectly fine

on my macpro when i browse the network it shows my imac, laptop, and it has a mysterious PC titled "macintosh-2" ...i cant for the love of me figure out what macintosh-2 is..i pinged the machine and it shows me a an ip of 208.67.219.132...if u traceroute that IP its registered to opendns.com but i have no running apps that link my macpro to that site...

does anyone have any idea what i can do or how i can figure out what this is and get rid of it?...

also im not able to connect to it at all jsut see it and have guest access - should also be noted i can only see it from my macpro not the other machines

please help!! thanks guys
Click to expand...

i noticed you said ur using airport. i wonder why none thinked of the obvious: someone might be using your wireless network without you knowing (that would also explain that it randomly shows up, as u mentioned further below on this thread). So my suggestions:
1) Is your wireless password protected? if not, then password protect it
2) If it is, what kind of encryption is it using? (WEP,WPA,etc)
If its WEP: Ive been able to crack my old WEP password through sniffing my wireless network, proving its kinda unsafe. Im sure WPA can also be cracked, but i recommend u use that instead of WEP

Each case, you should give it a shot by just changing the password and see if ur still getting this
 
sOwL said:
i noticed you said ur using airport. i wonder why none thinked of the obvious: someone might be using your wireless network without you knowing (that would also explain that it randomly shows up, as u mentioned further below on this thread). So my suggestions:
1) Is your wireless password protected? if not, then password protect it
2) If it is, what kind of encryption is it using? (WEP,WPA,etc)
If its WEP: Ive been able to crack my old WEP password through sniffing my wireless network, proving its kinda unsafe. Im sure WPA can also be cracked, but i recommend u use that instead of WEP

Each case, you should give it a shot by just changing the password and see if ur still getting this
Click to expand...


i do not have protection enabled - i have a mac address filter enabled - so no one should be able to hop on my network as such


any other ideas?
 
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