Who is the bunch of android and MAC addresses in the Xiaomi router device list? I identified each of the 62 TV stations in my house one by one, and half of the time was spent checking them out.

Last month, my home network was stuck at night. I logged in. 192.168.31.1 I wanted to see who was stealing traffic, but I was confused when I pulled out the device list - there were more than 30 devices online, half of them had garbled characters like android-9f2e1c, and the remaining ones were simply a string of MAC addresses, colons and hexadecimal, which looked like passwords. Which one is my TV, which one is the sweeping machine, which one is the old mobile phone of my cousin who came to live three years ago? Don't know anything. I don’t know which line to click if I want to limit the speed. That night, I went through the 62 devices on the list one by one. After doing so, I realized that the value of this matter is far more than "comfortable viewing" - the subsequent speed limiting, blacklisting, child control, and fixed IP all depend on the first foundation of identifying the right device.

Let’s first figure out why the list is so messy

The names in the device list are not randomly chosen by the router, but are reported by the device through self-reporting. The names are confusing because there are three situations in the newspaper::

It is best to tell the model number. Apple devices honestly report iPhone, iPad, MacBook ； Mijia ecological equipment follows the Mijia agreement, and the product names are "Mijia smart desk lamp" and "Mijia sweeping robot", which are instantly recognizable. This category accounts for half of my list, so I basically don’t need to worry about it.

Reporting the brand name is the second level. Most Android phones come with brands and models such as "HUAWEI-P40", "honor-9X" and "Redmi-K60". There was a small hole when I recognized it.: I have two Redmi units at home, one is Redmi-Note12 and the other is redmi-note11. The capitalization and spelling of each firmware vary, so don’t expect the format to be unified.

Those reporting android-xxx are the hardest hit areas. This kind of name is the default value of the Android system - the device does not give itself a name, the router can only use "android" plus a random character to make up the number. The old tablet, TV box, and electronic photo frame from a few years ago at home all have this look. At the most, there were seven titles starting with android in my list, who knows who.

The worst thing is that they don't even report their names, and just put a string of MAC addresses in the list. This is usually an IoT device or very old network card firmware. The MAC address itself is a series of numbers - the difference between it and IP, the first six digits are the manufacturer's ID card, etc., I am The MAC address article I’ve talked about it in detail here, but here I’m just going to talk about the things you need to know about the equipment.: Use the first six to search "MAC OUI Query" to find out which manufacturer made it. For example, if you search it is Sichuan Changhong, it is basically the Changhong TV at home.

Four ways to identify equipment, ranked from lowest to highest price

When it comes time to take action, don’t just make blind guesses. I came up with four methods, arranged in ascending order of cost. The first two can solve 80% of the problem.:

The rate jumping method is the best to use. Click on the device details to see the real-time uplink and downlink, and let family members play a video together. Whichever number will jump. I thought this was the trick on my kid's tablet - he was watching animation in the living room, I stared at the list, and it was definitely him who uploaded more than 500 K in one line. This trick is Child control and identification equipment That step is also the main step. How to circle the equipment at that time is written in the management and control article, so it will not be repeated.

The classification of frequency bands may seem rough, but in fact the amount of information is quite large. The 2.4G frequency band in my home is full of smart devices - cameras, sensors, sweepers, rice cookers, and mobile phones and computers are all on 5G. So take a look at the frequency band the device is connected to, and the range is directly reduced by half.: What you are looking for in the 2.4G pile is definitely not a mobile phone.

The power-off method is at the bottom of the box. Use it only if the first three are not suitable. One of the MAC direct display devices in my house was unrecognizable. Finally, I unplugged the smart home hub from the weak current box, and the line disappeared from the list, and the case was solved. This trick is stupid, and it always works - the device will go offline if it runs out of power, no exceptions.

After you recognize it, you have to change your name.: Don’t confuse the two entrances.

Recognizing who it is is only half the job. If you don't change the name, you will forget it after three months. There are two entrances to changing your name, and many people only know one.:

Web backend. Open browser 192.168.31.1 Log in, click on the row of devices in the device list card on the homepage, and there will be a place to change the name in the details panel that pops up. Fill in a name you recognize and save it and it will take effect immediately. I recommend that the name include the location and purpose, such as "living room - baby's tablet" and "master bedroom - TV". It is better than just writing "tablet" - to troubleshoot the problem after two or three years, you can locate the house just by looking at the name. Is there anything else to explore in the entire backend? I’m here for the menu panorama. 31.1 Backstage article Click through them one by one.

Mijia App. After the router is tied to Mijia, click on the router card in the App to enter the list of connected devices. You can also change the name of the device by clicking on it. An additional benefit of the app is that people can change it even if they are outside - I only remembered that the new camera at home didn't recognize it when I was in the hotel on a business trip last time, so I clicked it remotely to change the name. The names changed in the backend of the App and the webpage are the same, and changes in one place and two places will take effect. There are no two sets of accounts. Back then, I used the Mijia App to follow a new device notification to find out the whole process of using a mobile phone. Wrote an article , you can refer to how to turn the two pages of the device list.

There is something easily confused that needs to be clarified.: The name changed to the smart device in the Mijia App (for example, changing the desk lamp to "Living Room Night Light") and the name in the router device list are Two systems . The changes made by Mijia only follow Mijia's lead. Should the line in the router list be called android or android? If you want the router to be easier to recognize, you have to go back to the router's list and change it separately. At first I thought I could just change it to one side, but the desk lamp in the router list was still garbled, and I was so happy.

Random MAC: The biggest pitfall on the road to recognizing a relative

If you change the name of a device today, but two weeks later the name doesn't match the number and changes back to an unfamiliar entry, don't think it's a ghost - 80% of the time it's a random MAC at play.

Both iOS and Android now have "Random MAC" enabled by default.」: Use a fake MAC address every time you connect to WiFi (or reconnect after a while) to prevent tracking. The router recognizes that the device uses the MAC as its ID card. Once the ID card is changed, the router will treat it as a new device. The previously changed name, fixed IP address, and set control rules will all be invalidated along with the old ID card. This is the deepest pitfall in child control - I was tricked when I circled the device. I only circled the identity that was replaced by a random MAC. My child's tablet changed the identity and still accessed the Internet. I thought the function was broken. This pitfall is here. Control that article I wrote an entire paragraph in it. The solution is also recorded in that article.: Go to the device's WiFi settings and turn off the "random MAC" of this network and change it to "device MAC" once and for all.

The three types of devices at home have different attitudes towards random MACs and should be treated separately.: If you want to implement long-term rules such as speed limit and control on your mobile phone and computer, turn off the random MAC ； Just surf the Internet regardless of its equipment, just let it be ； IoT devices are not affected at all, and most of them do not have this function at all. How to recover a large number of devices that went offline after changing the password? In another article, I wrote the number of paths according to the four types of devices.

After recognizing: Everything that was messed up before has gone smoothly.

My most intuitive feeling the night after the recognition of Channel 62 was that the investigation became faster. For home network cards, open the list and glance at the names, and it will be clear who is running the heavy traffic - last night, the whole family card was locked, and I locked it for two minutes on the desktop computer in the bedroom, which was downloading large files in the background. Once the speed limit was turned on, the world was clean. If I hadn't changed my name, I would have spent twenty minutes identifying the equipment first, and my anger would have worn off long ago. By the way, having too many devices in the list is a burden in itself. How many devices are appropriate to install at home? How to lose weight if they are overloaded? I am here. The article about measuring with a machine I did a whole round of statistics here.

What’s more practical is that the following operations all have a starting point::

speed limit. The speed limit for my brother's game laptop was because I recognized the name of the line "Brother - Game Laptop" in the list first, and then clicked on it to directly set up and down traffic without arresting people on the spot. Speed ​​limit entrance and ideas are in The speed limit article , both entrances are operable.

Blacklist. Strange devices appear on the list, and you can tell if they belong to you just by looking at their names. When I took out Cengwang's mobile phone last year, I relied on the glance "I don't have this name in my family." If you really want to be blacklisted, how to operate the blacklist and how to recover if you make a mistake? Block that article It is a universal channel and is also applicable to Xiaomi backend.

Fixed IP. To bind a fixed IP to the printer and NAS, you must first identify the MAC of that device. If you admit that you made a mistake and bound it to the wrong one, the connection will still be lost after restarting. The two-step operation of fixing IP is written in The fixed IP article Here, identifying the device is its prerequisite course.

Control. When it comes to children's control circle equipment, only if you recognize the equipment accurately can the rules control people. As I mentioned before, the pitfall of random MAC was discovered first in the control scene.

From now on, when changing the WiFi password or changing the router at home, this is a big move. Before and after, you have to name each device in the device list. Who is offline, who is not, and which ones need to be reset. The names are all recognized, and the progress bar is visible. How to save the four types of devices after changing the password? I wrote down the number of ways. The rescue piece inside.

ending: Recognize your relatives once and take care of them for three years

The value of this job is Do it once and it will last a long time . After changing the name, randomly checking the MAC, and naming new devices as they come in, after developing these three habits, the device list will become your family’s network account book. You can know who is online, who is sick, and who has been blocked, just by turning a page.

Give an order: First log in to 31.1 and pull out the list and count the number of online ones → Identify the main equipment using the rate jumping method → ​​Identify the few strings directly displayed by the MAC manufacturer → Use the power-off method to finalize the key points → Change the names of the locations one by one → Turn off the random MAC for devices that control the speed limit → Name each new device on the spot when it joins the network. If two or three hours of work are spread over three years of inspections, it saves twenty minutes each time, which is a good deal no matter how you calculate it.