Strange new network appeared

[tjevans]

I have a new network that has appeared in my finder sidebar. I am at my mother-in-law's house and added her wireless router, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

The network is named "16.172.in-addr.arpa". I've searched on google, and I've seen many references to this, but the explanations are beyond my level technical jargon. Can anyone explain this?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I have a new network that has appeared in my finder sidebar. I am at my mother-in-law's house and added her wireless router, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

The network is named "16.172.in-addr.arpa". I've searched on google, and I've seen many references to this, but the explanations are beyond my level technical jargon. Can anyone explain this?

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS112, this is one of a network of name servers used for reverse DNS queries (DNS is used to translate domain names, like www.apple.com, to their corresponding IP addresses, like 15.23.44.234 (just an example) - reverse DNS does the same thing, only backwards). Name servers are servers that list records DNS uses for translation of domains to IPs and back.

As for why this appears on your list of networks, I have no idea. Check your Mac's local IP address while it's connected to the wireless router. Are the first two numbers 16 and 172? If they are, then Mac OS X thinks that this name server is on the same subnet as you, and is thus accessible over the "local" network (though in this case it's not local at all).

 

[tjevans]

Are the first two numbers 16 and 172? If they are, then Mac OS X thinks that this name server is on the same subnet as you, and is thus accessible over the "local" network (though in this case it's not local at all).

Nope, they're 192.168