Myself and neighbours accessing each other's routers??!!!

Hi there.
I recently transferred from Sky Fibre to BT Infinity. Everything was fine on Sky and faster once on BT for the first couple of weeks but lately we have been barely able to browse the web let alone stream YouTube, Netflix etc.

After doing a bit of investigating and logging into my Home Hub 5 at http://192.168.1.254/
I was very surprised to see that all my neighbour's devices were connected to my Router. I know this because they have named their phone's with their actual names and their iMac was connected (I don't have one).

Not only that, a little while later when I tried logging into my Home Hub 5 again, I connected to my neighbour's router instead!! I know this because they are also on BT and they have a Home Hub 4 and that is what it said at the top of the screen.

It's been mentioned to me that it could be to do with homeplugs and I know my neighbours have them as do I.

This morning, I unplugged all my homeplugs and logged successfully into my Home Hub 5 via direct Ethernet connection. All my neighbours devices were still showing as connected.

Then I tried logging in wirelessly. I connected to my neighbour's Home hub 4 this time!!! I though I must have somehow connected to their router but upon checking my Home Hub I was definitely connected to my HomeHub's SSID.

I can try these tests at different times of the day both wirelessly or via Ethnet (homeplugs or not) and will sometimes connect successfully to my hub and other times my neighbour's.

Can anyone make head nor tail of this because some of this seems impossible to me. I have read that it's possible for homeplugs to cross over to a neighbour's connection but how can I be shown as connecting to my neighbour's home hub when I am definitely connected to mine.

Any help with this is greatly appreciated!

Change the SSID of your router, change the network name of your Homeplugs, and configure secure encryption (and passwords) on both. That should do the trick.

Edited by micksharpe (Mon 28-Dec-15 19:53:55)

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

Change the SSID of your router, change the network name of your Homeplugs, and configure secure passwords on both. That should do the trick.

And do it with a different SSID for both 2.4G and 5G just to be sure...

could be the windows 10 password sharing feature
http://www.cnet.com/uk/how-to/how-to-kill-wi-fi-pass...

[censored]?

That's a *terrible* feature! Microsoft at it again...

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Microsoft at it again...

Aided and abetted by the US government, no doubt. No wonder they're keen to roll out Windows 10 to as many people as possible.

How can that be relevant?

Microsoft do not control the Home Hub which is where the "connections" are being seen.

Many routers provide a list of the local WiFi networks, are we sure that what is being seen are just that and NOT anything connected to the Hub?

Surely to connect to each others routers would require everyone to be running without any Wap key.

Could this be BT FON or Freezone?


https://www.bt.com/wifi/secure/index.do?s_cid=con_FU...

Very true. But whereas I can see my neighbours routers (if their SSID is displayed on), I can't see each individual device connected to them. To do that I would have to be logged in to the router itself.

Simple way round though, just change the SSID and password. And then set up access i.e. only the allowed mac numbers (the OP devices) to connect. Sorted.

Of course it doesn't explain why the problem is happening in the first place - unless BT only have a couple of default passwords....one reason to ALWAYS change them from the default.

As for the Microsoft password sharing feature with Windows 10...words fail me.

In reply to a post by ggremlin:

could be the windows 10 password sharing feature
http://www.cnet.com/uk/how-to/how-to-kill-wi-fi-pass...

While I do not agree with this password sharing of Windows 10, it would not be that as the OP said a Imac and mobile phones was connected, so unless the Imac is using Windows 10 and the phones are Windows phones then that is not possible.

I also can not see how homeplugs can connect either as they have to be synced with each other to start with and surely the houses would be on two different circuits, also the mobile phones would not connect to homeplugs unless next door have a Wi-fi extender.