[Techtalk] Router issue

Kathryn Hogg kjh at flyballdogs.com
Thu Dec 3 15:17:16 UTC 2009


Adelene Dawner wrote:
> That decision bit me in the butt earlier this week when someone else
> apparently decided to set up security for me, on my wifi. I don't know
> who did it, or the password that they used, or anything else of
> interest in that direction, but I know that it's my personal wifi
> that's affected, because when I manually turn wifi off at the router,
> the secure signal that I'm looking at goes away. (Needless to say,
> I've been keeping it off - if I can't use my wifi, nobody's going to.)
>
> How can I fix this? I assume I can still communicate with the router
> via the PC, but I haven't done so before - a friend helped me get the
> router set up the first time, and my main PC used Windows at that
> point. A quick google tells me that I might be able to completely
> reset the router, but I assume I'd have to set it up again from
> scratch if I did that, and I'd rather avoid that if I can - I get my
> 'net from Verizon, who gave me quite a hard time about using a
> third-party router when it was first set up, and I'm not looking
> forward to dealing with that again to get the information I'd need.
>
> The router in question is a netgear dgn2000.

Go to one of the wired PC's and check their default route.  On linux run

$ netstat -nr

Look for the line with the Destination column of 0.0.0.0  Then under the
gateway column you should have the ip address of your router.  Mine is
192.168.0.1

You should be able to access a web interface by pointing your web browser
to that address.

It's possible that whomever "secured" your wifi also set an admin
password.  If so, you may have no other choice than to do a hard reset. 
This is usually accomplished by sticking a paper clip or something into a
little hole marked reset somewhere on the unit.  If that's the case, you
will need to reconfigure all your ISP settings.


> Information on how to secure the wireless once I have it back would
> also be appreciated, though I'm sure I can find that myself if I look.

The first thing you should when you have access to it is to set the admin
username/password to something other than the default.

Then to secure your wifi, I would recommend using WPA.

-- 
Kathryn
http://womensfooty.com
National Team Donation - http://womensfooty.com/freedom/donate


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