Access Your Router Settings Via A Connected Device
Greetings! My name is Andres. I have recently been delving into the exciting field of I.T (Cybersecurity more specifically), and would like to share some of the things that I’ve learned as I embark on this journey.
For today, I will be showing you guys on how to access your router settings so that you can alter your wireless connections’ passwords, change encryption standards, prevent specific devices from connecting to your network, and so forth. This tutorial is for Windows only.
Naturally, the first step is to make sure that the computer/device you are using is connected to the correct network. Usually, you will not be able to change a router’s settings if you are connected to a network hosted by a different router.
With that out of the way, let’s open the Command Prompt. Press the Windows key, and in the search bar, type “cmd” (which is an abbreviation for command prompt), and click on the black board that appears.
This should open the Command Prompt, which looks like this:
Our next task is to figure out the Default Gateway IP Address. For that, we must type in “ipconfig” and press enter. That will return us a page that looks like this:
The IP address that we will be using is going to be the one to the right of Default Gateway. I’ve covered mine, but an example would be 192.168.0.1. Copy the address.
Next, we will paste the copied IP address into a web browser, and press enter. The type of browser shouldn’t matter. You can use Firefox, Chrome, Edge,etc.
This will lead us to our router’s settings interface. I am using an Arris router, so it is only natural that the interface shown is Arris. Yours may be Netgear, Linksys, Asus,TP-Link,etc.
Next, we will enter the username and password for the router. The username and password will vary if you have made specific changes to it, but the default username and password is “admin” for username and “password” for password in most routers. If the default username and password do not work and you do not know the personalized username and password for your router, contact your ISP (internet provider).
After we press enter, we should get a page that looks like this:
There we go! We have now access to the configurations of our router.
From this interface, you will now be able to configure:
- Your wireless network(s) name(SSID) and respective password(s).
- Whether you want DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)to be enabled, which automatically assigns and configure IP addresses to your devices.
- DNS (Domain Name System), if you want to setup a custom DNS server.
- NAT (Network Access Translation), which configures your connected devices so that they have an unified, standard IP address when accessing the external network.
- Which Encryption standard to use. (WEP,WPA,WPA2) WPA2 is strongly recommended over the others, as it is considered safer and does not possess some of the vulnerabilities present in the other two standards. If your router supports WPA3, that should be your preferred option.
- Whether you want to blacklist or whitelist devices from accessing your router, based on MAC address. This option should not be used as a security measurement because modern devices are easily able to obfuscate their MAC addresses in order to prevent detection.
- Other configurations
This should cover the basics of accessing and configuring your router settings for today. I hope that you were able to learn something new and that you can use this knowledge to either make your connection more secure, personalized, or simply to prevent your siblings/relatives from stealing all the Wi-Fi.
Have a good day.
