Do You Need A Fing Box?

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Phil asked: “I was looking for a way to see all the devices connected to my local network because my router doesn’t seem to provide helpful information. I stumbled upon an Android app called Fing. With the app, I discovered I have 32 devices on my network. The app will even alert me when a device joins or leaves the network. While using the app, I noticed I can get a Fing Box to block devices. It says it is a hardware add-on that will continuously check for intruders to my network. My question to you is, Do I really need a Fing box? And if I do, will it slow down my network?”

Phil, a Fingbox would probably not slow you down, it probably just scans the network periodically and wouldn’t add an awful lot of traffic. Having said that, no, you probably don’t need it.

32 devices on a home network is on the high side, so we would suggest that you check your network settings and make sure you’re using a password, since 32 devices on an average home does sound like maybe other people are using your connection.

You really don’t need a Fingbox for that though, that’s just an option on your router, and most of the functionality the Fingbox uses sounds like things you’d never really use, like finding bandwidth hogs, you don’t need that, it’s either the device downloading something large or streaming a lot of video, or finding the sweet spots in your house… you don’t really need that, if your network doesn’t work well where you are… well, move! Otherwise you’re in a sweet spot.

As for other features like speed tests, you can already do that without a $90 box that you won’t get until at least September.

We’d say, beef up your security settings in your router, you may be running an unprotected network, check periodically with the app for free, but we don’t think you need the box.