A recent scan of devices attached to my home wifi network revealed a device I could not identify. I turned off every networked device I could think of but it remained attached. It has the name "envoy" and a search of the MAC address says it was built by Texas Instruments.
Any suggestions for figuring out just what this device is?
Thanks,
Paul
MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13.4)
TI acquired Envoy Networks back in 2002. At that time Envoy was involved in "intelligent" cellular telephone networks that relied on Internet protocol to support mesh networking ... but this may have nothing to do with the unknown device.
How are you scanning your local network for devices? Can you ping this device?
Thanks for the quick reply. I've scanned it using LanScan on my Mac as well as Net Analyzer on my iPhone. It also shows up as an attached device on the GUI of my router. I have pinged the device and it responds. See attached ping results.
If you are using an AirPort base station to provide your wireless network, you can "force" this device from the network by using the Timed Access Control feature that you can find in the AirPort Utility. This is basically a means to deny access to the wireless network by MAC address. If you don't have an Apple router, there should be something similar with other manufacturers' wireless routers.
Doing so, is an age old technique to "discover" the device ... and potentially the user as they complain that they cannot connect to the Wi-Fi.
At this point you know that the device is tied to Texas Instruments somehow. It could be an actual TI device or a device that uses a TI chip-set that shows up in its MAC address. This device may be connected to your network by Ethernet as well.
FWIW. A number of these scanning apps are affected by the additional security that Apple has introduced in their newest versions of macOS & iOS ... which may cause the information gathered by these apps to not be 100% accurate. In fact, a number of these apps will warn you about this issue.
I am able to block its access to the network via my router and have not noticed any odd behavior. Still, I am curious what it might be.
Mystery Device Connected to Network
