Running a Toshiba Satellite laptop, Windows 7 Home Premium on a DSL Wi-Fi
connection. I tried to secure your router per your book Internet Safety Book and
when I put my IP address into two different browsers, I finally gave up. They
never connect to anything. The internet connection is fine. Now, I need to look
at my router and decide if I need to change the password, etc. What am I
missing here?
In this excerpt from
Answercast #18, I try to diagnose a problem in securing a router and walk
through the steps needed to connect to that router through a browser
window.
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What am I missing?
Iâm not exactly sure what step in the process youâre having trouble with. The phrase that concerns me in your question is, ââŠwhen I put my IP address into two different browsers.â
- You donât put your IP address into the browser
- You put the IP address of your router and thatâs typically 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1
Itâs usually one of those two. I think I have an article on the site that talks about identifying the IP address of your router. It is usually the âgateway addressâ if you ever do an IPconfig on your machine.
Find your gateway address
So Iâll back up.
Fire up a Windows command prompt. Itâs over in Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows command prompt.
Then, in the Windows command prompt, type:
- ipconfig /all
- (there is a space between config and /all)
- Hit enter
Thatâs going to dump out a bunch of information about your internet connection: your IP connection, your network connection.
One of the pieces of information there is going to be something called a âgateway address.â If it starts with 192.168 (which I suspect it will), then that is very likely the IP address of your router.
- That then is the IP address you would use in the browser to gain access to your router.
Browse to your routerâs IP address
So in the browser, in the address bar, you would type in, for example 192.168.1.1, and hit Enter.
The router will then, should then, respond.
Typically, it will ask you to login. Thatâs where you need to specify the administrative password for the router. Once having done that, it will give you its administrative interface.
So thatâs my gut feel, based on the question, where things might be hanging up for you. Just make sure that you are using the right IP address and you should be fine âŠor at least get a little further in the process.
Next from Answercast 18 â Is it faster to write to a drive that has lots of space than to one with less space?
On my system, between the wireless, wired, virtual, IPv6-toIPv4 tunnel, and so on, âipconfig /allâ shows 10 interfaces, and scrolls most of the information off the screen before you can read it. Even piping to âmoreâ is a bit overwhelming. It might be easier to use this command to narrow down the information you need to look at:
or maybe even
and look under the âgatewayâ column.
You really donât need the space between the âgâ and the â/â; this is windows, not linux.