Considering Access Points

If you live in a neighborhood with lots of other people, it's probably only a matter of time before unauthorized users start appearing on your network — though most wireless network intrusions are inadvertent. Even if your neighbors are a long distance away, your network isn't entirely safe. You can review the activity logs from the access point on your network and use MAC (Media Access Control) addresses to identify the wireless clients that access your network.

Reviewing the access point logs
Follow these steps to review the access point logs for your network:

1. Log in to your wireless access point (WAP) using a Web browser.

2. Locate the status or logging area of the access point's control panel. Most WAP control panels have a Status tab.

3. Click Log to review the access point log (see Figure 1).

If your wireless access point is also a router, you will probably see a lot of router activity listed in the log as well as wireless activity.



Figure 1: Review the log for all access point activity.

4. Note the MAC address shown for each wireless device that has logged in or tried to log in to your WAP.

In Figure 1, the MAC address is listed to the right, in the Note column.

5. If the WAP has a status screen dedicated specifically to wireless devices, click the link to open it (see Figure 2).



Figure 2: Wireless devices are currently connected to your WAP.
The Wireless status screen (refer to Figure 2) lists wireless devices that are currently connected to your WAP, or were recently connected. If you don't recognize some of the computers in the log, they may be unauthorized users. The log may list additional wireless devices that connected to your WAP earlier, but are no longer connected and thus are not listed in the Wireless status screen.


Identifying wireless clients on the access point
You can use these steps to locate and identify wireless clients on your access point:

1. Open a Web browser and log in to the control panel on your WAP.

2. Open the Status tab and go to the Wireless screen.

You should see a screen that lists currently connected wireless devices (refer to Figure 2).

3. Note the MAC address for each wireless device connected to your WAP.

4. Open the log for your WAP.

5. Match the MAC addresses from the Wireless status screen with entries in the log