Home > How and Why You Should Change Your WiFi Name and Password

Your router comes with its own password already in place, and you’ll also have a WiFi name already available. I know that a lot of people don’t pay much attention to their WiFi, nor do they know how to actually log in to the router’s interface and change any of their information.

I’m going to teach you how to change your WiFi password and how to change your WiFi name because it’s important if you live in a busy area.

There are actually a lot of reasons to reset your WiFi password:

• Default passwords are well-known and all over the Internet. While this may not seem like a big deal to you, your neighbor can easily look at your SSID and start using default passwords to try gaining access to your router. This would allow your neighbor to access your Internet at any time and download material that may not be legal.
• Hackers do not try and infiltrate difficult, highly secure systems. Instead, these individuals will try to go for the low hanging fruit that allows them to gain access to a system, or in this case a router, with as little issues as possible. Never changing your router password can lead to a hacker eventually hijacking your network and changing the password on you.

You’ll have to do more than just reset your WiFi password. You’ll also want to change your default router password, which allows you to log into a router console and start making changes. This is very important because routers use the same common passwords, so they’re very easy to guess and infiltrate.

How to Change Your WiFi Name and Password in 3 Easy Steps

Before you learn how to change your Internet password, you need to know how to find your WiFi password. I have three easy steps that you can follow to change your WiFi name and password.

Step 1: Find Your Interface’s Address

Your router is where your WiFi password exists. Most routers will come with their own web-based interface that allows you to access your WiFi password and name. You need to be able to find your router’s local IP address to access this page. You’ll find that there are a lot of different IP addresses that may be available for your router’s make and model.

If you’re running on a Windows-based system, you can open up the run command and type in cmd.

You’ll type the following in the Command Prompt: “ipconfig.”

Hit enter and wait for the screen to display all of your Ethernet adapter information. You’ll want to look for the following:

• Default Gateway.
• A number consisting of digits at the bottom ###.###.###.###. The may be single, double or triple digits between each period.
• This number will be your router’s access point.

Type this number into your web browser and it should return an interface. If for some unknown reason you’re not able to find your IP address, you can do a Google search for your router make and model to determine how you access the web-based system.

Step 2: Access the Portal

You should be spending this time accessing your web browser and typing in the IP address you found into the address bar. Once that’s entered, you should be able to access your web-based interface.

You may be able to access this page without a password, or you may be asked to log in using your router’s username and password.

If you have never accessed this page before, you will have to look up the default login credentials online and use these to access your portal. A good option to try is:

• admin for the username and leave the password field blank, or
• admin for the password and leave the username field blank, or
• admin for the username and the password

When someone has already changed your password on you, such as a disgruntled child or spouse, you’ll need to research how to reset your WiFi password.

Step 3: Change Your WiFi Network Name and Password

You’ll want to navigate the dashboard to find one of the following setting names:

• Password
• Passphrase
• Key

Find where the password is stored, and make sure that you change it to something that is fairly long. There are online password creators that can help you create a long, strong password for your router.

If you live in a very rural area, you probably don’t need a very strong password because there aren’t many people around. If you do live in a more suburban or metropolitan area, changing your password to something that is strong is highly recommended.

The name of the WiFi network doesn’t have to be anything too unique. Some people will name it something funny, such as their dog’s name, or some people decide to put a random name so that nobody knows whose router they’re trying to connect to in the neighborhood. I do advise against not naming a router your name because people can target you specifically.

You will need to update your password on all of your devices and on your Internet range extender. If you don’t have an extender and have a weak connection, I highly recommend reading our Trifiboost wifi booster review.

The next step will be to log into all of your WiFi devices and update your password. This also means accessing your smartphone and updating the password so that you’re not using excess data. Your devices will not automatically update the password, so this is up to you.

After you have initially changed your password, there is really no reason to continually update your password unless your password was part of a data breach or you would like to block access to your router from someone else.

You can also use the console that you accessed to update the firmware on your router and also see other important information about your router. You can change the frequency that your router is on if you’re experiencing slow Internet speeds, or you can see other in-depth information about your Internet service.

There are no comments available.