The Easy Way to Troubleshoot the Most Common Wi-Fi Router Issues: Part 2

Troubleshooting a wifi router isn’t rocket science. If you have a little knowledge of how it works, things can turn out to be real easy. Although most of us buy parental control modem routers thinking that the device will work efficiently and there will be almost no chances of an intruder using our data. Things can change, if you settle for an easy password or make any unwanted change in router settings unknowingly.

Your wifi connection is performing poor or there’s completely no Internet connectivity. The first step is to check speed, see if the problem isn’t at the ISPs end, remove all the connected devices from the list, restart the router, and reconnect the devices. If this doesn’t work, there’s a possibility of router hack.

Routers are like mini-computers, which means they can get virus. If you have a weak password or never changed the default password the device came with, it can be prone to hacking. If the router is accessed by the hacker, they will open the ports, change the settings and create many problems. But, nothing to worry about as there is a solution to the problem.

Troubleshooting a hacked wi-fi router

• Reset the router to factory default. You need to do a hard reset that will activate the default set-tings the router originally came with. Follow the 30-30-30 hard reset rule when resetting the rou-ter.
• When performing the hard reset, disable WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) to add more security.
• Change the IP address of the router because public IP addresses get attacked more frequently by hackers. Release and renew the IP address of the router. In case you are unable to change the IP address, speak to the ISP to fix the issue.
• You can also buy a secondary router with enhanced security features. To do this, you have to turn off the wi-fi feature of the modem and connect the secondary router wired to the modem. When done, you will have to set up the home wi-fi network again.

What not to miss-out on?

The work is not done yet. If your router was hacked, there’s a possibility that all the devices con-nected to the network were also infected. Scan and remove virus from the connected devices.

Other issues to look at?

If the router wasn’t hacked and it is not performing well after a reset, try out these steps:

• Check the DHCP settings of the router because these can cause intermittent or permanent connec-tion issue. Make sure the range of DHCP matches the gateway address.
• If all the devices connected to the router are using 5GHz channel, it could be leading to network congestion. Change the channel to 2.4GHz in some devices.
• If there’s connection issue in an individual device, there is a possibility of having problem per-taining to the specific device only. You will have to look for troubleshoot help for the particular device.

Mark Jepson is an IT Engineer and his recent presentation about having parental control on computer has made many parents think about having parental control router settings enabled on their computing devices.