random (blocked) incoming connection attempts from neighbours

so, i'm a bit confused by this:
i've switched to a new ISP few weeks ago, so did a bunch of my neighbours. now i can see random attempts for incoming communication blocked in my firewall (all on UDP, port 137 or 138), and as it's not just one neighbour but several randomly now and then, i can recongize them by IP (last IP part is the apartment number).

i suppose that it's some "normal" network behavior, not someone trying to hack me. anyway: maybe i didn't use correct keywords, so that i didn't google out the explanation. what could these connection attempts mean?

 

UDP 137 and 138 are related to netbios network share naming crap. I suspect what you're seeing is neighbors with a single PC attached directly to their cable modem who have network discovery running. The PC thinks its WAN IP is its local area and is browsing around all the clients in its IP subnet range (all clients with the same first 3 octets) to see if there's any network resources available. I wouldn't be concerned with it.

 

thanks for the clarification. i wasn't really worried, rather curious (something like "what the hell does the guy from across the hall think that he'd find in here?" ). i've found only some general info related to these ports usage, so, thanks a lot for the details!

 

If your wireless router is using the default address that came on the device then odds are that most neighbors(who are not nerds) have no idea what any of that means and their routers are default too. That means that when they search for networks that your connection may be better than the one in their apartment/home and therefor they try to connect.

Could be another mobile device connection atrtempt as well. i.e. blackberr, iphone, etc...

 

flattius_maximus: this is misunderstanding, it's not wifi, it's just many people in a big house connecting via the same ISP, and you can recognize each apartment by the fourth number in IP. technically, we're most probably connecting via one big hub (or something, it's locked in the box where all wires end ... but something like that). so, the explanation by Big Mike sounds like the most probable description of what happens.