Paranoid Dad messed around with network...

[noobPCgamer]

see my dad has been working for seagate for 20+ years on networking and other things in the IT department and has built up huge paranoia of like attacks and stuff, we recently got our new internet and it came with its own router, i set it up fine everything is working fine then he changes the name and password so i can't get in and now a month later he has plugged a second router via the WLAN port right next to the original router for no reason that i can think of.. he was talking about monitoring something a little while back but i haven't gone to ask him what it is for yet, anyone here know? I don't like the feeling of having my internet controlled, it really doesn't feel nice, so yeah suggestions as to what he might be doing would be nice
(he isn't using it to extend range btw so cross that one out, and he hid the SSID of the second router so it isn't visible unless you know the SSID which i don't)
 

[ShadowCaptain]

Im pretty sure he knows best

[RollinLower]

so you are questioning the work of a IT professional who worked in networking for 20+ years.

honestly as long as your internet is still working i wouldn't be thinking too much about it. he obviously knows what he's doing

[noobPCgamer]

Thanks for quick replies
here is the thing, he is overly worried a lot of the time, he refuses to let me port forward, and i just hope it won't affect performance in anyway. He doesn't care about speeds or anything, we were stuck on 7Mb down and 0.5Mb up until february when we got our new internet. I will ask him when he gets back from his dog walk  i only wanted some idea of what it is, i'm sure it doesn't really affect me but i want to be sure because if it is something i should worry about i want to talk to him about it...

[brwainer]

He can't be monitoring much via this second router since no traffic is going to be routed through it, unless he's come up with some really inventive routing rules in the main router (for someone with the knowhow this can be trivial, also depending on the capabilities of the main router).

 

Most intrusion and other detection software requires much better hardware than a router, and for all traffic to either be routed through or mirrored to the device and software. It doesn't sound like this is what he's doing.

 

One thing he might be doing is set up a honeypot, which is a system that looks like an attacker would want to target but is actually a ruse to detect attacks as well as deflect the attacks from the main system.

[noobPCgamer]

hey i did a little eavesdropping and i figured out that this is what it is: https://signups.samknows.com/ofcom/ so yeah doesn't affect me

[Huntsman]

Double NAT due to the double router. I think he's trying to create his own network which is a subset of your house's network. No idea what he would use it for though.

 

Again, if he is an 20 years veteran think he knows what he is doing. But then a veteran should know that most consumer grade router have massive loopholes.. especially those given by ISPs.

[brwainer]

2 hours ago, noobPCgamer said:

hey i did a little eavesdropping and i figured out that this is what it is: https://signups.samknows.com/ofcom/ so yeah doesn't affect me

That is a nifty research campaign

[Jarsky]

3 hours ago, Huntsman said:

Double NAT due to the double router. I think he's trying to create his own network which is a subset of your house's network. No idea what he would use it for though.

Thats not what's happening, he's not plugged into the second router - The second router is only measuring the performance of their Broadband and reporting back as per his post above yours.

 

We also have a similar campaign in NZ http://truenet.nz

It measures Downstream, Upstream, Ping, Page Loads, etc...and aggregates the data in their reports by ISP, Connection Type, Location (City/Suburban/Rural), etc...