How Do I Change My Router’s Password?

It depends

One of the steps in my article 8 Steps to Securing Your Router is to change the router’s default password.

Several people wrote in to ask how to do that, as it’s not clear how you access your router settings, much less the password screen.

I’ll show you, step by step, how I accessed the settings on my old LinkSys router. Your specifics will be different, but the concepts will very likely apply.

Locking down your router

Your router’s default password is a security risk. Use ipconfig to find your router’s IP address, open it in your browser, and log in. Find the password settings, set a strong new password, and save it in your password vault. Every router is different, but the steps are similar.

Default passwords

It used to be common that all routers of a particular model from a particular manufacturer would all have the same default password. If you had X company’s model Y router, you could look online to find out that the default login was a username of “admin” and a password of “admin”.

Needless to say, anyone could look this up and get the login information for your router. If they then could connect to the router — say via your open Wi-Fi — they could log in and cause all sorts of havoc.

Router manufacturers changed their technique. Each router would have a unique password, typically printed on a sticker somewhere on the physical device. That’s much more secure, though it has two problems: anyone with physical access to the router can read the sticker, and over time, the sticker often fades, gets torn, or wears off, and becomes unreadable, which is a problem if you ever need it.

In both cases, changing the default password and then saving that password in your password vault is the solution.

Connecting to your router

The most reliable way to locate your router is by the “gateway” address listed in your network configuration.

In a Windows Command Prompt, run the ipconfig command:

Look for the Default Gateway address.

Now, in your web browser, enter that address as the URL you want to go to:

And press Enter.

Depending on your router’s configuration, it’s very possible that you’ll get some sort of error telling you that the connection is not secure.

This is typically because most routers can’t fully support an https connection internally. That means they’ll default to http, or they’ll use https but with a security certificate that cannot be properly validated (the “ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID” error above).

Since this is a local connection to your router, it’s safe to proceed anyway. In the example above, we’d click on the Advanced button.

Again, even though it’s labeled “unsafe”, this is safe because we’re connecting locally (a 192.168 IP address) to our router. If this message were to appear when attempting to connect to a real website on the internet, it would definitely be unsafe.

Clicking on Proceed will take you to your router’s administrative interface.

My router, your router, my old router

Every router model is different. What that means is I can’t give you instructions for your router because I have no way of knowing what those would be. Besides, I’d have to list hundreds of different instructions here, which isn’t practical. Your router should have come with instructions, or you can look up the instructions online, being sure to specify your router’s make and model.

My current router is a mesh network controlled by a Unifi UCG Fiber. It’s … complicated1.

My old router was a LinkSys model, and it’s what I use for examples below.

Your router will almost certainly be something different, but the general concepts should apply.

Signing in

Once you’ve entered your router’s IP address into your browser’s address bar and pressed “Enter”, you should be asked to sign in with the current/default password.

On my old Linksys, the default is to leave the User name blank and enter “admin” as the password. It’s this very default setting that we’re going to change, because as you can see, everyone knows it. On newer/current routers, you may need to use the password found on a sticker somewhere on the router itself, usually on the bottom.

Once you enter the correct user name and password, press OK. You should land on your router’s “home page” for configuration.

As you can see, there’s a “Password” tab at the top of this UI. Clicking it takes you to the Password management page.

In typical password-setting practice, you enter your new password twice and click on Apply.

Your router has a new password.

About this password

A couple of additional notes on your new password:

• Choose a strong password. Access to your router can be used for many things besides just playing with a few settings. Malware has been known to perform complex spoofing attacks simply by altering how and where the router gets its DNS information, for example. You’ll want a strong password to protect it. Since this is a password you enter infrequently, it’s worth it to make sure it’s secure, even if it is difficult to enter. I recommend using, say, the first 16 or 20 characters of a random password created by a good password generator.
• Don’t forget this password. Keep it somewhere safe. If your password vault offers to save it, let it. If it doesn’t create a manual entry or secure note to save it. If you forget your password, you’ll need to perform a “reset to factory defaults”, which will reset the password to its default, as well as erase any and all other settings you may have changed.

As I said at the beginning, unless you have the same exact router that I do, it’s likely that the details of what I’ve shown will be different for you. Check your router’s documentation for the exact steps to perform this change.

Footnotes & References

1: It’s administrative interface, for example: