Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Changing a Router Password

How to change the password to your routerIf you were ever thinking of changing a router password, SSID name, parental control or any other settings to your wireless network, It is really simple; all you have to do if you have a windows machine is go to the windows menu, on the  search box type CMD, that will take you to the command prompt and just type ipconfig, look for the default gateway number and type it into the main search box  of your browser.

You will be taken to the router's main page and it will ask you for your username and password, keep in mind that this is your routers password which is different from your network password or wireless key; you can find this information on the back of your router, now this will vary from vendor to vendor depending on what type you have, some of the most popular routers are Netgear, Linksys, Thomson, Belkin, Airport Express and a few others. If you have a service like Comcast or Verizon Fios this information is usually found on your contract papers, but if for some reason you lost them, you can always call your internet provider and ask for them.

Once inside your routers main menu just choose the wireless settings option; from here you can change your wireless password, SSID name, which is the name of your network and wireless encryption like WEP, WPA, WPA2, which I always recommend using WPA2 encryption for your wireless connection, because this is by far the most secure.

Something else to consider when changing a router password:

Another thing you can do to increase your security is using the wireless mac
authentication feature to limit who has access to your network even if they have  the network key or password, the way this works is really simple; every appliance that has wireless capabilities has a unique mac address, so only the ones added to the list will be able to connect to the network, which is basically an extra layer of protection.

If you bought your own wireless router and set it up yourself and later down the road you forgot the username and password, you will have to do a hard reset to the router by pressing a tiny button on the back of the router  with a paper clip, in this case you will loose all your settings, but you will be able change the password to your router using the default username and password as previously mentioned before.