Protect Your Home Network Tidbit - A Simple And Quick Solution

Too often non-technical people get confused when they hear so many terms about security and from some of the press you read you would think that there is a full-time team of hackers that were hired just to take down your home network. The reality is there are a lot of automated attacks happening every second that are much more effective than a full-time team sent after you. Some of these attacks go after simple things that a home user could change in a matter of seconds to protect themselves.

Today's tidbit will cover the common malware attack now that tries to compromise your router using the default password. There are so many variations out there but here's a search if you're interested in learning more about the different attacks. If you know you have a router however you have no idea how to log into it here is a quick overview.

1. In Windows open a command prompt using Start Menu > Run > Type 'cmd' > Click 'Ok'
2. Type ipconfig
3. Get the IP address from the gateway.
Example of my laptop which has a wired and wireless connection.

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.148
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.1

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.140
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.1

4. Type the Default Gateway into Internet Explorer, in the above example you would type "http://10.0.0.1/"
5. If you're not sure of the username and password go to Google and type your router model number and default username password. Here's an example search from the popular Linksys WRT54G. As you can see in Google it isn't even necessary to click on the links, the default password and username is shown. Here is another site that lists most major model's usernames and password.

Skype Call Quality

If you're attempting to improve your Skype call quality one thing to consider is Quality of Service setting on the router. Especially in cases where you do a lot of multitasking or you're using a network that has other users adjusting the QoS settings can have a noticeable impact on the quality of your calls.

The attached article walks you through updating the router software, dd-wrt, to give priority to Skype information traveling over your network. It provided a noticeable change to my Skype calls. An easy way to test the changes is to use the Skype Test Call functionality and listen to your voice during the playback.

DD-WRT Tutorial 4: Defining Priorities with QoS