In our last post we showed you how to talk to your router. This time we’re going to explain a few things about wireless. Why? Because when we set up our game console to stream live HDTV, we needed to install a second router, one that could send and receive a certain type of wireless signal.
If you’re connected to the Internet via wireless (WiFi), the standard signals are fine. These are known as 802.11b or 802.11g (B/G from now on). The superior frequency is 802.11n (N from now on). Here’s how you can visualize the difference between the three. Think of watering flowers as opposed to putting out a fire. Everything you do on the Internet is fine with B or G, much like using a garden hose to water flowers. Even video streaming from Youtube is fine, that just depends on your bandwidth, not your wireless frequency.
N allows over ten times the throughput as G, about sixty times more than B.
Everything changes when you want to stream HDTV or DVD videos from one of your computers to another. In that case you need the fire hose. This is where N comes in. It is the fire hose you need for this kind of streaming. Most modern laptops and game consoles, smart TVs and DVD players have N adapters. N allows nearly limitless volume which is what you need for wireless video transfer.
Why would we use wireless instead of Ethernet? Basically as an experiment to see if it worked. Stringing an Ethernet cable across a room is also unsightly and, for some people anyway, much more difficult than setting up a WiFi combination. The console we used, an Xbox 360, went so far as to request an N signal. We initially tried to set up a B/G router for the HDTV signal but decided to shoot for the superior N setup to see how it all worked.
That’s enough tech for today. Your homework is to see is your router can use N. If it can then you’re on your way to getting your home theater, rec room, ‘man cave’ set up. If it can’t, we’ll show you how to install a wireless access point. The only cost will be the price of the router. How much is that? A quick check on Newegg and Amazon showed us N routers for as low as $19.99.
Thanks for reading! If you have questions, let us know in a comment below.
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Whether you have a DSL/ADSL or cable connection to the Internet, you most likely have a router somewhere between you and your ISP (Internet Service Provider). It may not be a separate unit, it might be part of a modem/router combination but we’re quite sure most of you have one.
A router ‘routes’ the signal it gets from your modem, separating it into different sections then sending those sections to the various computers that are connected to it. The connections could be wired, as when you use an Ethernet cable to hook your desktop up, or wireless, such as with most modern laptops and other handheld devices. Not all routers provide a wireless signal but most modern ones do.
The next several posts will take you inside your router. showing you how to take control of parts of it. Why? Because in order to set up our back office ‘recreation’ room, we had to figure out how to make one of our game consoles see one of our PCs. For that, we had to delve quite deeply into our old main router and another that we had sitting around. The next few posts will allow you to do the same thing or something similar. Here are two things you should read before we begin:
Warning! If you are working on the router that connects you to the Internet, you may accidentally change something that will stop that connection. This will entail a call to your ISP unless you have your current settings saved. We strongly suggest leaving your Internet router alone until you know what you are doing. Sure, you can look at it from your browser but don’t change anything.
TIP: If you have a new router, you must link it to your computer with an Ethernet cable. Once it is connected, you can communicate with it via your web browser. (If you are already connected to the Internet, you can communicate with your router the same way but you don’t have to do any other physical or wireless type of connection, other than the one that is already in place. If you can read this webpage, you are already connected to a router.)
Today, let’s figure out how to communicate and control a router. No tech talk, just plain English. Here we go:
1. Just as this website has an address, your router has one too. To talk to your router, all you do is open your favorite browser, we suggest Google Chrome, then type in a series of up to 12 numbers, separated into groups. How do you find out what those numbers are? You can find the paper manual for your router or, in some cases, the CD that came with it. If you don’t have either of those, you do a search on Google. Simple, right?
2. Get the model name and number of your router and do a search, making sure to keep any hyphens in place. Don’t worry about capitals but make sure you get the numbers and letters right. With any router that we’ve ever worked with, we’ve been able to find the manufacturer’s site and the PDF which describes how to access the router.
3. Once you get the number, open a new browser window and type that number into the address slot. Most router addresses are similar to this: 196.168.0.1 as you will discover in the manual. Some switch the 0 and the 1 while others have a 254 or something similar in the third set. Regardless, make sure you type the periods and numbers in the order specified.
4. Next, an admin window will usually pop up. Let’s assume that you have purchased a new router. The default username and password is usually admin and admin. Here’s a list of default usernames and passwords for most routers that you’ll encounter:
Here’s what you should see after you type the correct IP address into your browser:
One of our routers has 192.168.1.1 as its IP address. This is where you type in the username and password.
Once we type everything in, this is what we see next:
Don’t be intimidated by this. You’re just looking…for the moment.
All of the inner workings of your router can be adjusted from this screen. Many of the terms will seem obscure for now but some of them will become much clearer later on. At this point, just take a look around. The router defaults to the setup page that you see above. On this screen you can adjust the Basic Setup, the IPv6 setups and so on. These are in blue just on top of the white section.
Above the blue bit, you’ll see things like Wireless, Security, Storage, etc. Clicking on any of those will bring up a different set of adjustments and controls. Here’s what you will see if you were to click on the word Wireless:
Here is where we setup the wireless signal for some of our computers.
As with the last screen, there are sub-settings, shown in the blue section here, that control Wireless Security, Guest Access and Wireless MAC Filter. This Cisco router is what they call a ‘two channel’ model, one with a 2.4 GHz signal and one with a 5 GHz signal.
For the time being, snoop around a bit and see what you can find. Make sure you don’t change anything, just take a peek to see what you could change if you wanted to later on.
TIP: With a new router, you can change anything you want and not worry. Why? Because every router has a reset button that will undo any changes and set the router back to its default, factory settings. All you need to do that is a paper clip. Hold the reset button in for a short time, usually about ten seconds, then everything is back to the way it was when it left the factory. If you buy a used modem, this is the first thing you should do.
That’s it for today. Your homework is to find the IP address of your router and gain access to it. Make sure you jot down the IP address and password so you can access it next time without looking everything up.
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Ipconfig seems like a strange title for a post, right? Once you see how ipconfig can help you, it might lose it’s strangeness.
I’ve written about the command prompt in previous posts. Here is one: https://brianmahoney.ca/?s=command+prompt The command prompt takes you back to the days of DOS but it’s more like a window into the soul of your computer. Consider Windows/OS X the dining room of a restaurant while the command prompt is the kitchen, where the actual works gets done.
If you start a command prompt (start/programs/accessories/command prompt) then type ipconfig , you’ll see something like this:
The result of typing 'ipconfig' at the command prompt.
What does all of this mean? Well, a lot of it means nothing, quite frankly, but some of it is valuable if you get stuck and have to access your router. The IPv4 number is the IP address of your current computer. The Default Gateway number is the IP address of your computer. Ignore the other numbers.
I’m assuming that almost everyone who reads this is using a router to access the Internet. If your Internet goes down or your computer seems sluggish, there are a couple of things that ipconfig can help you with. One of them is the IP address of your router. This isn’t the same as the IP address that connects you to the Internet, it’s the one that you use to connect your computer to the router. Basically there are three IP addresses that you would encounter every day. One is the IP address that your router feeds to your computer. The other is the one that you use to access your router. The third one, which doesn’t really matter unless you want to hide it from someone, is the one that your Internet provider sends to your router to allow it to connect to the Internet. Lots of numbers!
If you have to access your router, you would type an address something like this: 192.168.0.1 into your browser. This number is the IP address of a D-Link router. Your router probably has a different number but many are quite similar. Some use the 192.168.1.1 combination instead. Assuming that you are connected to the router, typing in the router’s IP address and a password (default is admin), you can gain access to the router’s menu. This would allow you to change different settings or simply reset your Internet connection (instead of getting up and walking over to it and powering off the powering on again).
If your computer seems to be running slowly on the Internet, typing ipconfig /renew will refresh the IP address of your current computer. Typing ipconfig /? displays the full menu of commands for ipconfig.
Most of us use ipconfig to renew the IP address but, as you can see, there are many more things that this command can do.
Thanks for reading!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
