A way to hide your connection type

Hi smokedmike, Welcome to Windowsbbs!

Are you talking about making your own wireless network invisible or are you trying to get around policies set by a network administrator?

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The Networking forum is the best place, just as long as we know that you are using Windows 8.

 

I would rather suggest that they are probably more worried about sensitive customer data exposed via poorly configured security of your WiFi Network.

While it may be your computer & router, you are working for them, and have to abide by their policies.

 

About the only way the server at work or a Web site can know if you are wired or wireless is if it knows the MAC address of the ethernet or wifi adapter in use. A MAC address is sent with browser requests ONLY on the local network and does it does not get routed outside your local network beyond your router. However, if you are using specialty software to connect to a company Web site or connect to a VPN, such as a trusted browser plugin or a stand alone VPN client, the software could be coded to retrieve the adapter's MAC address and forward it to the server. This is eaqsily done using Internet Explorer ActiveX or a java applet. MAC addresses are unique hard coded into every adapter. Your IT staff can easily look up a MAC address, determine the manufacturer of the adapter and know if it's a wired or wifi adapter, and can do it automatically using a program at their Web site.

Also, some companies have employees "register" the computer they will be using for work at home. In such cases, your comp info is on record and can be cross referenced by the company's Web site.

A Web site cannot know if your connection is wired or wireless. A Web site can detect the useragent being used to access the site though, e.g. it can detect the browser and guess at what device is using it, it can detect the operating system, cpu info and some other info about the computer. This detection is fairly accurate but not exact because that info is passed by the browser and it can be easily faked.

For example, a site can detect a mobile browser used by Apple or Android devices, the operating system used and then display Web pages designed for mobile and handheld devices. Obviously, such devices are wireless because they do not have ethernet adapters. The site can detect if you are using a different operating system such as Window 7 and "guess" you have a desktop or laptop and display content designed for those, but it cannot know if its wired or wireless.

My guess is that you login to your company site using an Internet Explorer ActiveX Control or a java applet in IE or another browser, which would have been downloaded and installed the first time you logged into the site. These would be how your company site detects if you are wired or wifi.