Set Up Your Router in 7 Quick Steps

How To Set up a Router

I just purchased a brand new router because my old one broke down and I cannot get online both wired and wireless. Since I work at home, I need to ensure that my connection is at its utmost performance as I talk to people on skype and do video conferencing.

As I was going through the manual and setting up the router, my training kicked in. To let you know, before I became a work at home mom, I was a technical support agent for networking products and I troubleshoot routers, range expanders, wireless adapters, hubs and other devices 8 hours a day and believe me, I wouldn't ever forget how to set those things up.

More people are hopping on to cyberspace and I remembered that my clients were very frustrated at having to wait on hold for 30 minutes waiting for their turn and have an agent answer the call. So I decided to write a little tutorial on how to set up routers and get internet access right away.

Some networking companies have a set up disk packaged together with the router and you'll just run the set up and it'll configure the device for you. If it doesn't work, then follow these steps:

For Cable Internet Connection (Cox, Comcast, Roadrunner etc)

1. Hardwire a computer or laptop directly to your modem. This is to make sure that you have internet connection on your modem. If you can get internet that way then you can proceed to set up your router. If not, do a powercycle then check if you have internet. If nothing happens, then call your ISP. This is better than wasting your time trying to call your router manufacturer as they cannot help you with your modem.
2. Reset your router. Look for a reset button and press and hold it down for 30 seconds. Make sure that you see the power light is blinking. Do a powercycle.
3. Now this is the step you'd probably hate the most. Have your modem connect to the internet port of your router, hardwire your pc to port 1. Make sure that internet, power,wlan, and port1 lights are lit. If not, recheck your cable connection.
4. Click on the start button, then go to Run. Type in CMD. This will bring up the command prompt. Type in ipconfig/all. Take note of your default gateway (in most cases 192.168.1.1)
5. Open up your browser and type 192.168.1.1 on the address bar. You will be prompted to log in. By default try admin for username and password.
6. On the set up tab, which is the first tab that you will see when you entered the router's user interface, look for a button that said "MAC Address Clone". Press that button.
7. Look for a Status Tab. On that page, take note if you have values on the IP Address and WAN.
8. Open a different browser and check if you have internet connection.

It's that ehrm, easy to set up a router! You're done! Who knows, if you think you can already do it and consider yourself a network specialist, you can earn by troubleshooting and setting up your neighbor's network. It can very well become a great gig for you to earn extra income.

Need to replace or upgrade your router, check these items: