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Locating a hidden access point in our facilities
We have a new wireless network in our facilities and the access points are detecting a rogue access point in the building. Apparently someone installed a wireless access point in the past with a hidden ssid and no one knew it was there. Other then a couple of Android apps I've found, is there any way to locate a hidden broadcasting access point that is most likely not connected to the current network , but yet the radio is working and possibly it's trying to serve dhcp..... We can isolate it to one part of our facilities because of the current access points it's conflicting with show us the area it's in. But there are a lot of places one could be hidden in this building. Is there something that by signal strength or something of that nature that would help us locate this device?
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Well it was never a question of someone's phone working as a hot spot. We had our current wireless network reporting a rogue AP and it had a company name on it so we knew that it was a router placed somewhere in the building. The problem was that no one knew where it was located, and the installer did so not broadcasting the ssid. I did some research prior to coming to the site here, and I did see the tools mentioned in NxJNY's suggestion, and again in Rob Williams suggestion. And I did try a couple of those tools, but was unsuccessful....Homedale for one. Eventually, I just started climbing around in the crawl space's looking for power and Ethernet in the same area. I did eventually find a Linksys small business access point tucked away.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Thanks for the suggestions.
I use this all the time when I'm away from the office and need to access a WiFi signal for my laptop.
If you have access to an android Smartphone, download WifFiAnalyzer it should pick up the Wifi hotspot. Once you have identified the SSID - change the view type to Signal Strength and start walking around.
You should also put out a memo to all staff to make sure that when they at work - they should make sure that the WiFi Hotspot on their phone is turned off.
If it happens that the signal is coming from outside your offices, and is not password protected, you can use the WiFi Analyzer program to find where it's coming from and ask the owner to put a password on it.