Invisible wireless router

No. You will not "see" the router in "Network Neighborhood". The wireless router has an IP address which is only used for configuring and managing the device. To be able to "see" it with Network Neighborhood, the router would need to have NETBIOS services running on top of TCP/IP. There are a small number that do have this, such as those that act as NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices, but your device is not one of those.

No, a router is not usually a computer. It is a node on your LAN, and has an IPA like any other node, but it is not usually a computer. {Computers can be made to run routing software; in that case a router would also be a computer.} But, standard SOHO routers are not computers and will not appear in any list of your LAN's computers.

Does this device support UPnP? That's the only way you are going to see it, though I don't reccomend turning on UPnP, as it doesn't produce any useful functions, and it tends to introduce security holes.

If your laptop is working on the internet, then your router is working. If you want to see some proof that your router is actually there, then run a program called AirSnare. It is free and rather easy to use. It shows the mac address of everything that is connected on your network. In fact, I just checked the program to see if anybody connected to my network while I was asleep last night. The only mac addresses showing are my desktop, laptop, router, and wireless adapter--which are the only devices that should be showing on my network.

That's fairly misleading. It's closer to say "is not usually a Windows computer". A router is, by any reasonable definition, a computer. More specifically, a router will have a TCP/IP address and therefore be distinguishable by TCP/IP network software. It will not, however, be part of a Windows workgroup unless it uses the SMB protocol - which has nothing to do with being a router though it could exist on a computer that performs _as_ a router.

And that is just plain wrong. My routers do indeed show on all sorts of lists of my LAN's computers. E.g., they show in the output of the "route" command from both Linux & Windows clients.

While your statements are technically correct (as were mine), your arguments are just micro-nit-picking. I contend that the distinction I made between a router and a computer was clear and correct, even if it does not conform to your level of puerile pedantic pedagoguery.

{I don't get many opportunities to say "puerile pedantic pedagoguery".}

And... :)

Given that every PC has a routing table, the first thing that each machine does is a logical AND of the destination and the mask in order to determine the network and then it consults the local route table to make a routing decision. What's that if not a router? :)

And don't forget that if it's uPnP then it could well show up in the XP network places and that even a Linksys has a processor, memory, runs linux OS so that makes it a computer.

But I think we know what he meant ;)

Depends on how you define "useful functions".

If you call the ability of an application such as MSN Messenger to enable voice/video easily with a uPNP router then i'd say that could be useful to someone that doesn't otherwise know how to do it but equally yes if you didn't want that behaviour then yes holes aren't good either.

David.

Egads. I forgot about UPnP. The very first thing I do in the router configuration is disarm this mis-feature. I've noticed that the default setting seems to follow a pattern. Originally, almost every router that had UPnP delivered it enabled by default. Then, the security experts started suggesting that this is a very bad idea. So, later firmware updates arrived with UPnP off by default. Eventually, Microsoft decided that shoving MSN Messenger in your face was more important than security, and started convincing manufactories to ship UPnP on by default. Most of the current firmware ships with it on (again). Of course, I can't easily prove this, but it probably makes a good conspiracy theory.

Checking... Yep. Linksys WRT54G v5 ships with UPnP enabled.

What I find disgusting is that UPnP (which has very little to do with Windoze Plug and Play) is actually a potentially useful feature:

Well, no. Your statements were technically INcorrect, but I was trying to give you the benfit of the doubt.

Be insulting if it makes you feel better. I freely admit to being pedantic, and pedagoguery is pretty much in the mind of the beholder, but you'd better look up puerile.

Thanks for all the comments, it looks like I need some form of network monitoring software over & above Windows capabilities.