Regular checks over the last couple of days have shown no unaccounted for results. My wifi has been off the whole time and that is workable for me so I'll leave it that way. When Unis go back from their holidays I'll try wifi again and see what happens 8^).

End of story, Windows 10 does not allow unknown devices onto the LAN. It can share the WiFi password but that�s a different system, it does sometimes show a bunch of extra devices in the OS GUI, none have an IP locally.

Rather than being dogmatic and going by the book I prefer to check and eliminate all possibilities nevertheless I agree with your comments. Windows 10 however behaves somewhat unexpectedly regarding networking hence my comment. With 20+ years of testing MS operating systems I saw many surprises however that was in the past and have never bothered fully checking out Win 10 and its many quirks.

No worries, understood.

I hate windows, have to use it everyday nonetheless.

Fascinates me to this day how proud companies are to say "we are a full Microsoft house." Why anyone would use Windows to host a server is beyond me!

Joining this at a late date but you said you have some power line plugs, have you set up the security on these?
I use Netgear units and thought noting of the security, until I looked into slow broadband. Found out I was using my neighbors SKY! Shock to him too!
Regards.
David

Fairly common actually!

Anyways, he�s not got them:
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/security/t/4578601-...

In reply to a post by Dwight1379:

you said you have some power line plugs

No, I bought a set several years ago when investigating poor wi-fi but they didn't work for me and I returned them. I don't have any now and my network is entirely ethernet cabling (with wi-fi switched off 8^) ).

As an aside, I've now developed an additional way of checking that all is in order - a quick look at my BQM just to make sure that it is all red. During one of the 'intrusions' a few days ago I saw a short period of about half an hour when pings were being responded to at my IP. That stopped again as soon as I disabled wifi.

I have been following this thread with interest as I have seen some transient devices appear in the network infrastructure in Windows 10 but I have never seen them appear in my router let alone have an IP address assigned.

The only clues I had at the time were the MAC address or a short manufacturer code which were an Amazon Fire device & a Samsung mobile phone after googling the heck out of what was happening.

I remember reading an explanation that the unknown devices were simply probing all WiFi devices in reach and that is why they briefly appeared.

Just to complete this thread - I tried enabling wifi again very briefly so that I could download an audiobook but the router admin page immediately became unresponsive and from my BQM I could see that it suddenly started answering pings even though that option was disabled. The router won't be used on wifi again and PlusNet have agreed to send my a HomeHub for the cost of postage. That's the end of it's working life now for the Netgear R6250 (well as soon as the postman calls it will be).