I first want to acknowledge the great customer service from the 5GStore and also want to thank Michael Horowitz for his websites and all the great information he has shared.
Everything is up and running, I am very happy with my Pepwave Surf SOHO MK3. It is attached to a new Surfboard SB6183 and all is stable.
Here is my question:
I am currently rebuilding & upgrading my network from scratch. New modem, new router, new network, separate VLANS, isolating all IOTs, Etc. As I began putting each and everything on the correct isolated network I was surprised to find my Pixel-Phone was already connected to my new network.
UPNP disabled from the start, new network with a different name, different password, different IP address (moved from 192 address range to 10).
When I went to configure my phone it was 100% connected to my new main SSID, no password prompt, no pin prompt just connected. I never disconnected the phone from the old network but it was taken off line when I unhooked the old router/modem.
Guessing some settings on the Pixel auto-connected but I found this very strange. Is this a security issue?
The only thing I can figure is my home PC is signed into my google account and the phone is signed into gmail so it just synced up.
Robert
First, thanks for the kind words and welcome to Peplink.
As for your question, I don’t follow all the details. If I understood, you phone was connected to OLDSSID and then you created NEWSSID with a new password and the phone connected to NEWSSID by itself?
I can’t believe that’s what happened, even given whatever sharing Google may be doing between devices. And, Google does share WiFi passwords amongst your devices.
Hello Michael, thank you for the reply and yes your statement below is correct;
If I understood, you phone was connected to OLDSSID and then you created NEWSSID with a new password and the phone connected to NEWSSID by itself?
I followed your installation guide from you website, set up the router offline, everything worked great. My old system was an Xfinity Gateway, and my new system was a Surfboard SB6183 and the Surf SOHO.
I was more than surprised as I went piece by piece (laptop, other laptop, IOT’s, etc) and put each piece on the VLAN, SSID, Etc that I wanted. All required normal configuration. When I finally got to my Pixel phone I was really surprised to see it had somehow autoconnected to my network with ZERO action on my part. Again, brand new network, brand new password, NO COMMON names or subnet, or anything that links them together.
I was signed into GMAIL on my phone, so I assume it just synced them up. My PC connection is also hardwired, not wireless. I do use 2FA, so maybe google recognized the devices “belong together”.
As mentioned, not a problem but I found it VERY odd. It almost seems like a security risk if your gmail account is hacked and it somehow syncs to your network.
Thank you for the reply.
Hello again, I wanted to add another interesting thing I discovered since my last post. When I went into my Client list to look at the connected clients, the phone, shows up with no description and no MAC address (item ending in IP .14) all the other clients which I connected “auto described” and “auto MACed”
I have come to the conclusion that since my phone was signed into GMail, and my PC was signed into GMail (basically linking google accounts), and the fact that my Pixel phone has a build in security key, in simply auto-synced with no password.
FWIW - I am running Android 11, the latest and greatest, not sure if anything is new in Android 11.
