Installing a wireless router is, most likely, an extremely easy thing. First things first, what type of internet connection do you have? For your run of the mill cable company like comcast, odds are, you may simply want to hook up everything and just try it.

There is going to be a power cable that needs to plug into a power source. Also, you will want to locate your eithernet cable. It looks like a thick phone cord. Eithernet will go from the modem that your internet provider gave you to the internet/wan port on your router. Power cycle the modem and router once to make sure that they sync up. Give it a couple minutes. Now, if your connecting wireless you may simply be able to select the name of the wireless network that coincides with the name brand router you bought. For example, if you bought a Dlink router the name of the wireless network will most likely be Dlink by default. If your computer is hooking up with a eithernet cable, hook up another eithernet cable from one of the ports, one through four, on the back of your wireless router. Hook up the other end to the back of your computer. If you have a dial up modem in your computer. Make sure that you are connecting the cable to the wider port on the back of your computer. Not the standard phone jack. Do not worry about the CD or any software that came with your router. Simply try internet explorer or your favorite internet browser and you should be set to go. Keep in mind though that your router does not have encryption set by default. So, that means that near by people can connect to your wireless network and use your internet, or worse, they could spy on you and steal data. Click on the Wireless encryption link on my main page for general information on how to setup encryption.

If you have a DSL connection, odds are it is not going to be quite as easy for you. There are some additional steps required to get things going. Again hook up everything and power cycle your device. If wired, hook up the cable to your computer or if you are connecting wireless connect to your wireless network. Give it a minute to think. It may take a couple minutes to do its thing.

This document provides information on how to setup your router from a windows machine. Click on start, run, and type CMD. In Vista/7 type CMD in the search. Click ok or hit enter. You will be at a black command prompt with a blinking curser. Type in ipconfig and hit enter. You will get a whole bunch of data. What you are looking for is the IP address. You may have one for your local area network connection and one for your wireless network connection. Find the appropriate one and take note of it. You could write it down or leave the command prompt open. It will be something like 192.168.0.2 . Now, open internet explorer or your web browser. Even though, you can not bring up public web pages yet, simply open your web browser. Trust me this should work. Type in the first three sets of numbers exactly as you found in the command prompt(192.168.0) , followed by, the number 1. So in this example we will type in 192.168.0.1 in internet explorer. If your IP address starts with 169, it is not talking to the router and you will need to follow one of my documents on trouble connecting. Lets assume that there isn't a problem. You will see a screen that is asking for your username and password. It is asking for the default username and password for your router. There should be a card or some information in the box that came with your router that will tell you this information. In a lot of cases, it will be, leave the username field blank and type in admin for the password. If you can not find this information, check the link to the default username and passwords on my router center page.

This is where it gets a little tricky. After all, I can not give you the step by step for every router ever made. Odds are, in most cases the screens and links are going to be different then what I am explaining. However, do not get upset yet. Your looking for a option that is going to be fairly easy to find. Such as setup wizard, internet, initial setup, wan connection, or something of that nature. Don't be afraid to simply start clicking on links on the page. If you mess up, you could always push in the reset and restore your router to defaults. In the case of DSL you will eventually find a screen that asks for the username password and provider information. Now, you may have to contact your DSL provider for the details, if you do not know this already. It will be, for example, something like username jdoe, password mypassword, and sbcglobal.net . If you are using at&t or SBC DSL service, save the settings or click apply. Your router will need to restart. In fact, you may have to wait for it to save. Then power cycle your modem and router again. Then wait several minutes and try your internet connection again.

Most likely, you are set to go. Try a web page. Like www.reliabletechnicians.net and see if it is working. If not hopefully you can find the answers you need in my other documents.