Strange Machine On The Network(?)

[andalusia]

Alright, basic information first.

At college, they won't give me the WEP key to the wireless system just as a 'precaution' or something like that... A little irritating, but I get by and use a local network which is unprotected for the internet. There is often a machine on the network called echo1, which I suspect to be the owner of the network's computer. Then I just forget it's there.

Now today. I'm at home, and I'm in the Finder, and I notice in the sidebar underneath Shared there is a machine named echo1. I cannot access the machine, and I'm not sure what's going on here. However if I click on Network, the machine doesn't show up.

Is there some way I can identify the machine, it's IP address, how it's accessing the network or any information about what it's doing in my shared area? Is it just some malfunction of my computer or the Finder?

Thanks for the help.

 

[zachsilvey]

Does it show up with an icon for a Mac or a monitor with a blue screen of death. OS X will automatically put any shared machine on the network in the shared sidebar. It's nothing to worry about unless you have file sharing on because then they can see your machine.

 

[andalusia]

Does it show up with an icon for a Mac or a monitor with a blue screen of death. OS X will automatically put any shared machine on the network in the shared sidebar. It's nothing to worry about unless you have file sharing on because then they can see your machine.

My point is that I don't know the machine. I know none of the computer's in our house are called echo1, and I want to know how they are on the network at all since it's a WPA protected network with letters and numbers as the password...

 

[zachsilvey]

Oh, I misunderstood the original post. I know that no matter what network I am on I still see my Mac Pro because I use back-to-my-mac.

 

[slapguts]

Does it come back after a restart?

There's a local bar with wifi I stop at sometimes, with 15 or so shared computers on it's network. They stay in the sidebar until I either restart my machine, or restart finder.

 

[Makosuke]

Since the machine is around at school, I'm going to go with slapguts' "leftover" suggestion--I've occasionally seen computers that stuck there even when they were no longer available.

That said, the only other likely possibility is that it's your computer, although I'd think it would have to be something like a virtual machine with sharing turned on to actually appear there. You aren't running a VM when it's there, are you?

You can also, of course, log onto your home router and just ask it what all is authenticated. If anything is connected, whether properly or illicitly, it'll show up in the router's DHCP list. If there's something you don't recognize on the list, you should look into it. Otherwise, nothing to worry about.