Hide Computer Name

[cessanfrancisco]

Hi,

I tend to use public WiFi a lot and I was wondering, is there a quick and easy way to prevent my computer name from being broadcast all over the wireless network?

Thanks in advance.

[wintpe]

theres two issues here

one the only way your computer will be seen by others on the network, is if its advertising itself.

it may be doing this because your firewall is configured to allow incoming access, and a daemon is running like samba
that broadcasts to other systems, that its available.

switch your firewall to block everything should deal with this.

the other is arp and dhcp.

theres not alot you can do about this but set your computers name to something unmeaning-full.

dhcp when it gets a request for a ip, usually stores in dynamic dns the name provided in the dhcp call, to the address, but that should not be broadcast to all other systems, only your computer can do that.

also other systems will see you if they have pinged your address, and they have an arp cache entry of your computer.

nmap will also be able to probe your computer from another system, and only your firewall config can defend against that.

regards peter