Mystery IP address

[JackElliott]

Hi, got my new Gargoyle router. Love it!

We installed the router to help us determine which devices in the building are using the most bandwidth. This is a mixed network of Windows, Linux machines, and wireless iOS and Android mobile devices.

Gargoyle shows a device at a LAN IP address which is currently responsible for 22% of the upload bandwidth.

There are no devices that I am aware of at that address. None of my network tools find a device at that address, nor does the device there respond to pings. The wireless router does not show any device connected to it at that address.

Before I start tearing the network apart trying to find it, I want to inquire whether Gargoyle may be mis-reporting something?

TIA, and apologies if this is a FAQ.

-- Jack Elliott

[Eric]

Make sure it isn't the router itself (which will usually have an IP address that ends in .1, e.g. 192.168.1.1). If it isn't the router itself... then I suspect someone is connecting to an open wireless access point, or a similar situation.

There have been some reports about random IP addresses showing up from time to time as a result of weird/malformed packets on a network, but every report of that happening has had that associated with very little/negligible bandwidth usage. If this is sucking up 22% of your bandwidth, chances are that this isn't from a few malformed packets but something real.

[JackElliott]

Many thanks, Eric.

I should have posted a "solved" followup to this. My usual network tools didn't find the host at the mystery IP address, but Gargoyle's own Connected Hosts page (which is where I should have looked first, my bad) did. It was an Android phone an employee was using.

So -- solved.