This article understands how to check if someone is using your wifi network. Assume that you are in a home network or an office network with a wireless router. You are suspicious that your neighbor or a different office is using your wifi network illegally.
How to identify.
Every user on the network would have an IP address. This is assigned by the wireless router. The router maintains a table of the list of users on the network. This would include the IP and mac-address of the user. This table would provide an insight of the number of users connected to the wireless router. For example, if the number of users on the network is 5 and we observe an additional user, this could indicate that the wifi network is being used by unauthorized user.
Steps to check the table
The steps shown are on a DLINK wireless router. The name of the section may vary based on your wireless router type. For example in a D-LINK router, we observe the Active client table section.
Step 1
Log in into the web console of the router using admin credentials
Step 2
Go to the status tab and click on the the Active client table. This is shown below.
On the table it can be observed that there are two devices which are connected to the wireless network. One is the laptop and second is an amazon firestick.
Currently there are only two authorized users on the network and the active client table does not show any other devices indicating that there are no unauthorized users on the network.
It is recommended that you check if someone is using your wifi network using the active client table occasionally, since it would provide insight as to whether your wifi network is being used illegally used by any other devices.