Roger DeReu: This is the Free Computer Consultant. In this screencast, I'm going to cover some of the basic setup parameters for a wireless router, but really any router but most of them today are wireless. This is a Netgear WGR614, many other router brands are similar. Now, here we are already in the web server internal to the router and in the setup page. If you don't know how to get here, I have a separate screencast on how to do that.
First let's take a look at setting a password. There is a default username and password, you may want to change that. On this particular model under maintenance, you'll find set password. Here you type in the old password, put in the new password and repeat it, click apply. It will likely prompt you to then login with that new password. See, you do want to be careful what you type, how you type it, you may even want to type in something like notepad first.
So you know for sure what you're typing and then copy and paste it in here. I then recommend either putting a label on the bottom of the router, if you are not concerned with others in finding that password there or go to my website at www.freecomputerconsultant.com. Click on the free tools and take a look at password safe, which is an excellent way of storing a large variety of passwords and only having to remember one basic password to get into it.
The next thing you want to look at is remote access. This is whether or not the router can be accessed and configured from out on the Internet. It's a feature not where many people will use it, but you want to know whether it is on or off and by default, it should be off and you would place a check here to turn it on. Then you can set other parameters, for instance, IP addresses which you can restrict that too, but for most users you would just leave this off.
Next what you're going to want to look at are the basic LAN settings. These are the internal address parameters for the router. Now the address of this router by default is 192.168.1.1. However, if you are going to access other networks, maybe a corporate network that you are going to remote into to work at home, if this address conflicts with the address that work that could be a problem. You would want to contact your network administrator at that office to find out if it does and if so, what to change this to. You may want to change this third octet here for instance to 101 or something else. If you do that, you will likely then have to update the parameters in DHCP server, which is what hands out addressing to all of your machines. Change that as well to 101. Some routers may do this for you automatically, others will not.
I also like to set the addresses up a little way to get them kind of on their own area so to speak of a network addressing scheme. I also like to limit it to just a couple of more than the actual devices I have. If I have three or four devices, I might limit this to just five addresses 51, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Then you click apply to make that take effect.
Now once you've done this work, you want to back up the configuration. Most routers will let you do that. Under maintenance, backup settings, you can save the current copy of the backup settings or you can restore settings from a file you've previously saved and another option is to revert to factory default settings. If you really think you might have goofed up, you can revert to the factory settings and start from the scratch. That's it for this screencast. We'll be covering other more advanced features and wireless security features in another screencast. Hope, you will join us for that. This is the Free Computer Consultant. Please visit my website www.freecomputerconsultant.com. Thanks for watching this video.
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