Could someone be stealing my wi-fi?

B

b1gstan

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Joined
Aug 20, 2011
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Location
Joburg
Hi guys,

I'm pretty much a newbie here and need some advice in layman's terms.
Here's my situation:

  1. I've got a wired no-name brand ADSL2+ router, using Cybersmart as my ISP. They gave me the router.
  2. A buddy gave me his old MWEB Billion W40 wireless router and I simply plugged a network cable from the Billion to the no-name wired router turning the Mweb router into a wireless access point.
  3. I connect two iPhones and occasionally my PS3 via wi-fi.
  4. My wi-fi network is set up using WPA-Personal and uses TKIP for encryption
  5. I have NEVER been able to access the admin page for the MWEB router - it always says "A username and password are being requested by http://192.168.1.254. The site says: "WebAdmin"
  6. It's worked beautifully like this for the last year, but over the last couple of months I've been hitting my cap within 2 weeks - even with Cybersmart giving me an extra 2gb per month.
  7. I've proven that it's definitely related to wi-fi as my Cybersmart usage graphs match what I've downloaded when I switch the wi-fi router off and only use my PC and wired internet connection.
  8. I've installed wifi monitoring apps on the iphones and the usage is much lower on the phones than what's being used from my overall cap.


This leads to me to wonder - could someone more tech-savvy have figured out my router's admin password (admin, admin doesn't work - even after a router reset.) and could they have set up their own wi-fi using my access point?
 
Simple answer, yes.

If you access the router with the admin password, the Wireless Security is visible in plain text.

So what you need to do is reset the Wireless router again and use another browser to try and access it, FF, IE, Chrome, whatever you like. If the reset is successful there should be no issues logging onto it.

You can connect the Wireless Router straight to your Computer as well, by temporarily removing the Wired Router and set it up.

Once reset and logged in you can change the Wireless Security code and admin password.
 
Thanks guys, I tried resetting the wireless router and connecting it direct to the PC before posting, but no luck...
I'll keep playing around, but I'm starting to feel the inlcination towards cutting my losses and just getting a new unlocked (Mweb routers are locked) wireless router - it makes more sense than using the wired router and then an access point too...
 
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