raymac46 Posted September 22, 2014 Share Posted September 22, 2014 (edited) Got back late last week from a few days cross border shopping in the Northeast US. I visited my share of Best Buys, Staples, Wal-Marts and Targets and in every case I was struck by the plethora of wifi routers on sale in the electronics departments. Some unproven but likely inferences I made from this: Those combination modem - wifi router gateways flogged by ISPs still suck badly and most folks have to connect a real router to them if they want decent bandwidth. The demand isn't caused by laptops, but arises from tablets, smartphones and video streaming boxes like Roku. Everybody and his granny wants a wifi network these days. Since the average person doesn't have a clue about wifi networks, either most of these boxes will be secured by Wifi Protected Setup (push a button) or left unsecured. A really wonderful prospect. I suspect I'll be getting more and more calls to rescue someone from their wifi screw-ups. Better stay current with the technology. Edited September 22, 2014 by raymac46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted September 22, 2014 Share Posted September 22, 2014 Oh, yeah....WiFi Protected Setup is the first thing I disable on all routers; home, family, clients. I think the routers that are on sale are the ones left from the last glut, before the newer ones with wifi a/b/g/n/ac came out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 I think the routers that are on sale are the ones left from the last glut, before the newer ones with wifi a/b/g/n/ac came out. Well not really.. most of the ones I have seen are at least N with some AC. Your average wireless router is around $40 now with some as cheap as 20 bucks. As far as the Protected Setup crap, I usually disable this. Luckily most new routers come with a diagram pamphlet and a cd that walks you through step-by-step including ap name and wifi encryption. If you can read, you can setup up these newer routers. The big problem is that most all of them use a default admin username/password for the entire line of products. Basically most of them use Admin as the user with a blank password. You can easily change this but it is stupid to not cover it in the guide. A quick google search will give you a list of most every router with default username/password. Also most newer routers have a basic and advanced mode, as far as the options, and only cover the basic mode. I know this I have had to setup and pick out at least 4 routers this year alone for various family members 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lewmur Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 (edited) Got back late last week from a few days cross border shopping in the Northeast US. I visited my share of Best Buys, Staples, Wal-Marts and Targets and in every case I was struck by the plethora of wifi routers on sale in the electronics departments. Some unproven but likely inferences I made from this: Those combination modem - wifi router gateways flogged by ISPs still suck badly and most folks have to connect a real router to them if they want decent bandwidth. The demand isn't caused by laptops, but arises from tablets, smartphones and video streaming boxes like Roku. Everybody and his granny wants a wifi network these days. Since the average person doesn't have a clue about wifi networks, either most of these boxes will be secured by Wifi Protected Setup (push a button) or left unsecured. A really wonderful prospect. I suspect I'll be getting more and more calls to rescue someone from their wifi screw-ups. Better stay current with the technology. My tablets don't have cell service so when I'm out and about, I'm constantly looking for wifi connections. And, yes, there has been a great increase in wifi coverage. But I've run across very few that don't have WPA2 encryption and almost none without at least WEP. I live on the eighth floor of an apt complex for the elderly with over 400 units. So I can detect about 20 routers from my apt and not a single one of them is un-encrypted. So it seems those that are setting up their own routers are savvy enough to do it right, or they've paid a professional to do it for them. But what even the professionals seem to be missing is channel over crowding. It seems most routers default either to channel one or eleven and those channels quickly become over crowded. The Google Play Store has apps to graphically analyse the wifi spectrum and let you know what channel to set in your router. Edited September 23, 2014 by lewmur 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted September 23, 2014 Author Share Posted September 23, 2014 One other thing I noticed was the considerable increase in wireless printers on sale. I have had a couple of folks in my neighborhood who got one of these and just followed the default setup. As a result the printer got a DHCP assigned IP on the LAN - which later conflicted with a tablet or laptop IP. I have been careful to set the printer IP manually outside the DHCP range of the router when I install one of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted September 24, 2014 Share Posted September 24, 2014 Well not really.. most of the ones I have seen are at least N with some AC. Your average wireless router is around $40 now with some as cheap as 20 bucks. As far as the Protected Setup crap, I usually disable this. Luckily most new routers come with a diagram pamphlet and a cd that walks you through step-by-step including ap name and wifi encryption. If you can read, you can setup up these newer routers. The big problem is that most all of them use a default admin username/password for the entire line of products. Basically most of them use Admin as the user with a blank password. You can easily change this but it is stupid to not cover it in the guide. A quick google search will give you a list of most every router with default username/password. Also most newer routers have a basic and advanced mode, as far as the options, and only cover the basic mode. I know this I have had to setup and pick out at least 4 routers this year alone for various family members Thankfully the newer, higher dollar ones actually require you to reset the administrator password during setup. But they do not require you to change the username and password from whatever they set as stock. I always change that as well. But not everyone can afford a higher dollar one and it is hard for some folks to realize that you really need to change that. Another stupid human trick on routers, is that some of the routers, set the administrator password AND the password for wireless to the SAME THING! Sigh... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted September 24, 2014 Share Posted September 24, 2014 One other thing I noticed was the considerable increase in wireless printers on sale. I have had a couple of folks in my neighborhood who got one of these and just followed the default setup. As a result the printer got a DHCP assigned IP on the LAN - which later conflicted with a tablet or laptop IP. I have been careful to set the printer IP manually outside the DHCP range of the router when I install one of them. Odd.. I have setup a few wifi printers (including my own) and I have never heard of this being an issue. Maybe this is because people are turning off the printer and another device connects and then gets the printer's IP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lewmur Posted September 24, 2014 Share Posted September 24, 2014 One other thing I noticed was the considerable increase in wireless printers on sale. I have had a couple of folks in my neighborhood who got one of these and just followed the default setup. As a result the printer got a DHCP assigned IP on the LAN - which later conflicted with a tablet or laptop IP. I have been careful to set the printer IP manually outside the DHCP range of the router when I install one of them. A wireless printer needs a static IP outside the range of addresses assigned by DHCP so that the printer drivers in your devices don't have to be reset every time you turn on the printer. However, if the router doesn't have a DHCP range set, the printer setup has to choose one that may conflict with other devices if the printer was off when the device was turned on and received its IP address from the router's DHCP. IOW, the printer's auto setup can only do what the router allows it to do. But that's what pros are for. If auto setups cause problems, and you can't fix them yourself, then it's time to pay a pro to do it. (Unless, of course, you can call on an idiot like some of us to do it for you for nothing!!!) :clap: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted September 24, 2014 Author Share Posted September 24, 2014 Yeah the main problem occurs when the printer is initially set up and gets a DHCP IP. Then it uses that when it is turned on. If someone turns off the printer and connects a tablet or laptop to the LAN, it may get the printer's IP. Then if the printer is turned back on you have a conflict. It's always best to manually assign a printer IP outside the DHCP range of the printer, or at the very least a high DHCP value. I usually use 192.168.0.250 if the gateway is 192.168.0.1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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