How is chromecast initially discovered before even connecting to wifi? - tcp

How is chromecast initially discovered before even connecting to wifi? What is the underlying technology?
Is it done using multicast if so will a device get an ip before providing wifi password to send multicast

https://superuser.com/questions/626199/how-does-google-chromecast-connect-to-secured-wifi
Chromecast acts as an access point when first turned on. The software you install software on your andriod, windows or mac device will find it and connect to the chromecast's AP directly. Then the chromecast scans for access points allowing you to pick one and enter in your password. Once this is done, it will connect to that access point instead of acting as it's own access point.

Related

How to send data between two ESP32's over same LAN?

I want to send data(I think I can achieve it sending http requests) between two ESP's that are connected to the same LAN. I don't want to use one as an access point! I have one esp that is acting as a homekit device, and I want to send data(for example, sensor readings) to it from another esp. I've seen many tutorials where one device is acting as an access point, but that's not what I need. I also don't really need to access the esp data directly from my laptop, so I believe I don't need the html page. I would appreciate any help, code, or any existing tutorials, because I didn't find a single one.
Configuring one ESP as an AP is only done for convenience. You can configure both of them in STA (station) mode and they will connect to, e.g. your phone hotspot or your wifi router.
Connected to the same hotspot, they are on the same network, and they will be able to communicate with each other (unless the hotspot is configured to not allow this ... ). The tricky part will most likely be for the "client" to determine the IP address of the "server" in order to create the connection.
If you have admin access to the hotspot, you can cheat and hard code the IP addresses (assuming that the hotspot will assign the same IP address to the device the next time it sees it.)
It's also not difficult to use mdns (aka bonjour), which allows a network device to assign itself a local hostname. So you can name one ESP ("myserver") which allows the ESP running the client code to connect to "http://myserver.local"

How to switch connection between cloud and local network in ESP8266

I would like to understand it is possible to switch the ESP8266 connection between the cloud and WiFi LAN.
There are two paths to control the sonoff switch, connected to a wifi router. In case the phone is connected to the router, Path 1 acts as LAN network and ESP8266 can be controlled even without internet. In case I am not at home and would like to control the switch remotely via cloud, path 2 would be followed. Thus, I could get the best of both worlds.
From all the examples that i have seen so far ESP8266 could be operated in only one mode at one point of time, either Lan or cloud (both via the WiFi router).
So kindly help me with the switching code/logic, that will wait to work upon the commands provided via LAN mode if there are none left. Now it should work upon the instructions after switching to cloud mode and finally return to LAN mode after sometime and so on.
For security reasons your Sonoff device should not be reachable from the internet directly - ever. It should only be accessible within your local (home) network. That's your path 1.
To enable path 2 - without affecting the Sonoff device at all - you need a way to build a VPN from your smartphone to your local network. For the node it will look like all traffic is coming from your local network even though you are actually connecting into it from remote.
A fairly simple and cost-effective way to achieve this is to run PiVPN on a Raspberry Pi. See e.g. this video for instructions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15VjDVCISj0

QtNetwork active interface change detection

I am aware this question is howto oriented, but I am getting desperate. Lets say some computer has more than one hardware network interface, eth0 and wlan0, the first one is onboard Ethernet port, the other one represents PCI WiFi card. What I would like to achieve is that the my Qt app while running, can detect if someone (for testing purposes, I myself) in operating system disconnects computer from LAN. Once app detects link failure, it tries to connect to same LAN via other available interface, wlan0 or vice versa.
I am reading Qt 5 Bearer management docs, but I simply do not get needed info. Now, should I open QNetworkSession with open() and connect to QNetworkSession::stateChanged(QNetworkSession::State state) or are there any other ways to do it in Qt fashion?

Is there a way to detect the number of connections active on a Wifi network?

If I want to detect the number of connections active on my home Wifi network, how should I go ahead doing it? This can be useful for building applications which would serve as monitoring unidentified/unrecognized people being fraudulently misusing a person's Wifi network.
How to know whether your neighbors or others are using your wireless network is rather complicated.
If your neighbors are experienced Wi-Fi hackers, you might not be able to tell at all.
If they're just stealing your Internet connection, you may be able to tell from the logs on your router.
To find out who's on your wireless network, you'll need to start by taking inventory of all the devices that are meant to be connected. Find out their MAC IDs and their IP addresses (if they're static).
To find out the MAC ID/IP address on a PC, click the Start menu and choose Run. Type cmd and click OK. In the screen that opens, type ipconfig /all and hit Enter. The MAC address will be shown as the physical address. Once you know the MAC addresses of each of the PCs on your network, you will recognize any addresses that don’t belong under the screen that shows the MAC addresses of current connections.
Check IP addresses
Likewise you may be able to see how many IP addresses have been dished out by the DHCP server. If you check the IP addresses of each of your PCs, you can see if other IP addresses have been served.
To find out your IP address from the Start menu, click Run. Then type in cmd and click OK. In the screen that comes up, type ipconfig which will display the IP address for that computer. (Bear in mind, however, that if the PC is set to auto detect settings, then the PC's IP address will change the next time the computer is rebooted or switched on. Sometimes previously served numbers have not yet expired, so you may think someone is connected when they are not.)
Dealing with intruders
If you do find someone using your connection, they may well not be doing so maliciously or even knowingly. Sometimes people can’t tell which is their own connection and they may honestly believe that they are using their Wi-Fi router rather than yours. The best way to deal with this is to set up your own security and maybe you can help them find their own router!
The optimal solution is to set up a strong password using WPA or WPA 2 of almost 20 to 30 digits and numbers. Once your network is functioning, you can switch off the SSID broadcast (which prevents it from advertising the name of your network) so it would effectively disappear as far as your neighbors are concerned, and the first you might hear of it is when someone complains that their Web connection has disappeared.
You could look for logs such as current LAN clients, connection or status log, or connected MAC addresses.
Be Happy :-)
Do you have access to the Access Point management ?
Look for MAC addresses and their filtering. Modern APs allow you to filter devices and or limit the timeframe during which devices can authenticate themselves, using a hardware button.
A link on how to secure your AP here, and a good start to know what to play with !
You can Either USE this Command... On your Router or Modem... Some Modem's have console for Ping and Commands like that....
ipconfig -all

How do I get a MAC address for a remote system when I only know it's IP address?

I'm working on a Wake on LAN service that will run from a web site and should interact with many different platforms - therefore, no Windows-only solutions. When a user registers their system with the web site, I need to get the MAC address to use in constructing the "magic" packet. I have a Java Applet that is able to do this for me and am aware of an ActiveX control that will work, but I'm wondering if there is a way to do this server-side by querying routers/switches. Since the system may be on any of a number of different physical subnets, using ARP won't work -- unless there's a way to configure the router(s) to perform the ARP on my behalf.
Anyone know of any network APIs, proprietary or otherwise, that can be used to look up MAC addresses given an IP address? I think we're using Cisco routers, but it's a complicated network and there may be multiple vendors involved at various levels. I'd like to get some background information on possible solutions before I go to make a sacrifice to the network gods. No point in abasing myself if it's not technically possible. :-)
EDIT: We do have the network infrastructure set up to allow directed broadcast, though figuring out the exact broadcast address since netmasks are not always /24 is another conundrum that I need to solve.
If you are on a local network that uses DHCP you might be able to look in the servers database to get the MAC of the last user with that address. In the future you could watch the network for ARP requests and cache the responses in some sort of table. You might also look at using RMON or SNMP to try and query the Address Tables on the switches and routers.
It should be noted that to use WoL across routers you either need to enable Directed Broadcasts or you need to have a relay server in the local segment.
Been a while since I played routers and swtiches but this might be a starting point for what to query using SNMP http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk648/tk362/technologies_tech_note09186a00801c9199.shtml
Use the following:
getmac /s destIp
To get the remote session Mac address.
I don't know if these might be helpful but take a look:
http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=134120
http://www.qualitycodes.com/tutorial.php?articleid=19
You've said everything I can think of...
The source MAC address changes as a packet hops from device to device so unless the client is on the same subnet, the server won't be able to get the MAC address. (You would do it via ARP)
A signed java applet or activex control would be the easiest solution. It would be able to (almost passively) get all the networking info you need (IE doesn't even prompt to run a signed applet)
If you are fully aware of the network that is using the service then you could probably query a gateway's client-list via SNMP or CDP. You would be able to map out IP-Addresses to MAC addresses... but this is really vendor dependent (but common) and wouldn't be much better (imo) than having an applet.
Currently the application is using a Java 6 applet that allows me to extract both the hostname and the MAC address from the remote system. I don't like having this dependency on Java 6, but Snow Leopard and Windows both support it, so I can probably live with it.
On a related-front our networking folks approached me for some help with converting some existing code to ASP.NET. During the conversation I asked if they had live MAC address information (since they do port shutoffs based on suspicious network activity -- viruses/worms). Turns out they do and we may be able to leverage this project to get access to the information from the network database.
I don't think there is any way to accomplish this. When the IP packet goes via the first router the host's MAC information is lost (as you know MAC is only used in ethernet layer). If the router most close to your PC was capable of telling the remote MAC code to you, again it would only see the MAC of the next router between your PC and the "other end".
Start sacrificing.
There's no general way to do this in terms of the network unless you have no routers involved. With a router involved, you will never see the MAC address of the originating system.
This assumes that the originating system only ever has a single network interface, so has only a single MAC address.
In fact, are you even sure that your "magic packet" (whatever that is) will reach the system you want it to reach, through the routers? That sounds like a function the routers or other network infrastructure should be performing.
Mac address is only used on network segments, and is lost at each hop. Only IP is preserved for end-to-end - and even then the from ip address is rewritten when Natted. I guess my answer is, not possible unless everything is on the same network segment, or your routers are set up for proxy arp (which is not really realistic).
You can only get MAC entries in the ARP table for machines on the same network. If you connect to a machine via a router then you will only see the routers MAC address in the ARP table. So there is no way of knowing the foreign host’s MAC address unless it's a host on the same network (no routers involved).
And by the way there are many similar question already on SO.
if it's a windows system you can use NBTSTAT -A
this will return the netbios info and the IP is there
any Management system like SMS or Altiris will have this info
The DHCP server is a good idea
If it's local you can ping it and then quickly run ARP -a
look for the IP and the MAC will be there.
you might need to write a small batch file.
if you have access to the PC you can use WMI to access the info for the Nic with DHCP.
As said above we can get mac address from a known IP address if that host is in the same subnet. First ping that ip; then look at arp -a | grep and parse the string on nix* to get mac address.
We can issue system command from all programming languages standard API's and can parse the output to get mac address.Java api can ping an IP but I am not sure if we parse the ping output(some library can do it).
It would be better to avoid issuing system command and find an alternative solution as it is not really Platform Independent way of doing it.
Courtesy: Professor Saleem Bhatti

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