About a month ago, I wibbled on about the extent to which domestic devices will chit-chat to all and sundry over your home network. And I mentioned that I have a surprising number of devices already gossIPing (sorry) away. This weekend, I counted them.
Not because I particularly wanted to, but because I get occasional problems with devices having the same IP address on the network - mostly down, I think, to my habit of hibernating PCs. It's irritating, because some devices won't tell you there's a problem, they'll just not work until you reboot them. There's a simple solution - make sure every device on the network gets the same, unique, IP address every time.
So this is what I spent a bit of time doing this weekend. Turned into quite a Sherlock Holmes affair, since some devices just don't want to let you know what they are, you have to divine it from tables of MAC addresses and manufacturer. Also doesn't help that my crappy Netgear router GUI fails to correctly report the MAC address or identity of devices that are connected via the repeater. A proper 'Well, I've %&£*ing started now...' exercise. Now finished. Which, in a vaguely anally-retentive way, makes me happy.
Seventeen. Seventeen devices on the network. And I bet I've forgotten one somewhere.
Not because I particularly wanted to, but because I get occasional problems with devices having the same IP address on the network - mostly down, I think, to my habit of hibernating PCs. It's irritating, because some devices won't tell you there's a problem, they'll just not work until you reboot them. There's a simple solution - make sure every device on the network gets the same, unique, IP address every time.
So this is what I spent a bit of time doing this weekend. Turned into quite a Sherlock Holmes affair, since some devices just don't want to let you know what they are, you have to divine it from tables of MAC addresses and manufacturer. Also doesn't help that my crappy Netgear router GUI fails to correctly report the MAC address or identity of devices that are connected via the repeater. A proper 'Well, I've %&£*ing started now...' exercise. Now finished. Which, in a vaguely anally-retentive way, makes me happy.
Seventeen. Seventeen devices on the network. And I bet I've forgotten one somewhere.
RSS Feed
