My apartment complex has a shared Wi-Fi network. There are two Cisco Meraki MR62 access points on each building, and my MacBook periodically switches between them; which is annoying because it drops all of my connections to the outside world.
One of the access points is fine; I have a stable, fast connection as long as no one else is streaming video. But there’s an issue with the other access point.
Someone’s private wireless router is constantly sending pings to the shared router. This happens almost 24/7 and my connection is slow when I’m on the same access point, even if there’s no one else on the network. I believe these pings are choking the network, making access to the outside world very slow.
Here’s what I'm seeing from Wireshark; 10.127.144.87
is the private router, 10.128.128.128
is the public router:
If I try and ping the private router, I get the following:
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
92 bytes from 10.128.128.128: Communication prohibited by filter
Vr HL TOS Len ID Flg off TTL Pro cks Src Dst
4 5 00 5400 2693 0 0000 40 01 6a59 10.155.68.76 10.127.144.87
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
92 bytes from 10.128.128.128: Communication prohibited by filter
Vr HL TOS Len ID Flg off TTL Pro cks Src Dst
4 5 00 5400 30e0 0 0000 40 01 600c 10.155.68.76 10.127.144.87
What could be causing this? Is it indeed responsible for the slow network? Is there some way I can prevent this? I’ve tried ARP spoofing 10.127.144.87
thinking I could use ipfw
to drop the pings, but it doesn’t seem to have the desired effect. Here are the rules I’m using:
00300 deny icmp from 10.127.144.87 to any in
00310 deny icmp from 10.127.144.87 to any out
00320 pipe 100 icmp from 10.127.144.87 to any in
00330 pipe 110 icmp from 10.127.144.87 to any out
00340 deny icmp from 10.128.128.128 to 10.127.144.87 in
00350 deny icmp from 10.128.128.128 to 10.127.144.87 out
00360 pipe 120 icmp from 10.128.128.128 to 10.127.144.87 in
00370 pipe 130 icmp from 10.128.128.128 to 10.127.144.87 out
Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated!