Now that bandwidth is cheaper and mobile devices are everywhere, WiFi has become standard — phones, tablets, laptops, all use WiFi, and wireless routers have entered ordinary homes as standard equipment. But for first-time router users, setting it up can be a headache.
I often get a lot of people adding me on QQ asking about router issues. Why is that? Back in junior high I envied people with certifications, thinking they were the real pros. The internet was new and booming then, and I wanted a Cisco certification — why? Because they make networking equipment. So I started reading about networking on my own. Now I don’t envy any certificate, because I’ve seen far better pros who don’t rely on certifications and don’t care about any organization certifying them.
OK, let’s start exploring the router.
Installing the Router
First right-click “My Network Places” and click Properties, find the local connection (wireless is the wireless connection), right-click Properties, double-click “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)”, and set both IP address and DNS to obtain automatically. A router has two common ports: WAN and LAN. Connect the modem’s LAN port to the router’s WAN port with a network cable, and connect your computer to the router’s LAN port, or search for and connect wirelessly. If you use wireless, it will prompt you that the router is unconfigured — configure it? Choose yes, and it will ask for a PIN code, which you can find on the router’s label. If you use a cable, visit 192.168.1.1, or 192.168.0.1 if that doesn’t work — those are the two most common. A login box pops up; the default is usually username admin, password admin, though it may differ — see the manual. Once in, find “Setup Wizard” in the menu; the wizard guides you through the setup. Enter your internet account and password, and you’re done. That covers the basics of using a wireless router.
Limiting Each Device’s Bandwidth with a Router
This requires your router to support “IP bandwidth control”; if not, don’t bother. First you need to know each device’s network card MAC address. If you don’t know how, use this blog’s search box to search for “view MAC address” — I’ll post about it later and you’ll definitely find it. Once you know each device’s MAC address, find DHCP Server in the router menu, then “Static Address Assignment”, and assign a fixed IP to each device, selecting “enable all entries” — this requires restarting the router. Then find “IP Bandwidth Control” in the menu, enter the IP of the device you want to limit, choose mode “limit maximum bandwidth”. The conversion between bandwidth (Kbps) and KB/s is 8: 100 KB/s = 800 Kbps, and a 1 Mbps connection is 1024 Kbps = 128 KB/s. Work out your bandwidth, fill it in, check enable, and you’re done — this doesn’t require restarting the router.
Serving a Web Page to the Internet from a Computer Behind the Router
If your computer is to serve the internet, say a web (WEB) service, you need to set up port forwarding to your internal computer. In the menu, find “Forwarding Rules” → “Virtual Server”. For the service port, fill in the port you want to forward — web is port 80. The IP address is the internal IP of the computer providing the web service, starting with 192.168. For this you need a fixed IP; see “Limiting Each Device’s Bandwidth with a Router” above for how to configure the DHCP server to assign a fixed IP. For protocol, choose the one you use — usually TCP — and click enable.
If you’re still unclear, feel free to leave Renfei a message — here, by email, QQ, or Weibo.