How to Access my Router from the Internet On-Site or Remotely [5 Amazing Hacks]

We all love having control over the connections on our internet. Getting control over the router can give you an easy way to control devices connected and sometimes prioritize some. This thus calls for the ability to access the router from the internet either at home or remotely.

Configuration of the router is as important as connecting devices to the internet connection. The configuration assures you of security, privacy, prioritization, and even parental controls.

The configuration can also give you remote access to the router. The process of remotely accessing the router enables you to always keep abreast of the things taking place on your network. You can also access router settings from a phone!

Having control of the router is therefore very important for personal and commercial connections. It will also help you in case you need something from your home connection and you are far from home!

Therefore, in this article, we will give you a step-by-step guide on how to access your router remotely through the internet. Let’s dive in!

How does accessing the router from the internet or remotely work?

Have you ever needed something available on your network when you are away? Sometimes, you even want to conduct some maintenance on your network which is available on your personal computer which was left at home.

In this case, to get access to the content at home, you can use third-party services such as dropbox.com, Google Docs, OneDrive, and others. In other instances, you can get another paid service such as “GoToMyPC.com” for access remotely.

However, for all these methods, you have surrendered the control to a third party, have limits on the storage, or you pay monthly or annual subscription fees. This should not be the case if you follow the following steps for accessing content remotely.

In addition, why should you struggle with third-party services which you have to pay when you have your own router. This is especially good for routers with NAS.

However, the correspondence worker needs to have a firewall to ensure the data flow is protected. In addition, you have to make sure that the credentials are only available to the right people.

Why do you need to access your router remotely?

There are several reasons why you would want to do router remote management. The most important ones benefit you and the other approved users of your connection markedly. The following are the main reasons:

1. For convenience

If you have a family or colleagues who may not how to connect, disconnect or troubleshoot your internet connection, then you need to access your router remotely. This ensures you do not have to call professionals to come to your home to do simple troubleshooting or maintenance.

You can easily ensure that your connection is working well from wherever you are. You will also be able to ensure your home devices get the best connection. For this, therefore, you need to know how to control the router remotely.

2. To check the current users of the internet

Sometimes, you need to know who is using your internet. When you are not around, you want to know if the children are using the internet instead of doing their chores.

Otherwise, It will also show you if there are other illegal users on the internet when you are not around. This thus helps to know what is consuming the bandwidth when you aren’t home.

This is a reason to access your router from an outside network!

3. To remove network parasites or guests from the network

Have you had complaints that your internet is slow? This may be due to guests being on the network all the time or having network leeches. However, they may know when the administrator is not around and get on the network.

When you can access your router from the internet from far away, you can easily remove these users from your connection. This will leave only the permitted users on the network and speed up the connection.

Thus you will have control of the devices connected to your router even when you are far from home.

4. To get access to files stored on your router storage

When you have a NAS drive, you may want to get access to the documents stored on the hard drive remotely. In this case, you just need internet access and your NAS router login details to access the files.

Therefore, if you are working remotely or are on a holiday, you can access your router on the internet and use/ share files as conveniently as possible.

You can also retrieve music and video files from your media server especially if you have a favorite playlist or have videos that you want to access every time and everywhere.

5. Watch your home surveillance cameras on the phone

When you have surveillance cameras at home, you can easily check what is happening at home remotely. This is important if you want to spy on the happenings in your home and you are not around.

The modern surveillance cameras can store or have live footage loaded on the home network. Therefore, with the ability to access the router network remotely, you will be able to view them.

You can alert the security forces if there is any breaking into your home or also know the care being given to your children or pets when you are far from home.

How to access the router from the Internet On-Site or remotely

There are a few steps for accessing the router from the internet. For you to be able to access the router remotely you have to ensure that you carry out the right configuration on your connection.

Change the router admin password

For our routers, there are two sets of passwords. One of them is the WiFi password which everyone uses to get an internet connection. The other password is the admin password that is used to access the router’s web user interface.

Access to the web user interface gives you the ability to change the router’s settings. Configuration of the router’s settings enables you to perform several tasks such as prioritizing the devices, changing the IP address, changes the WiFi SSID (network name), change the WiFi password, and other tasks.

Even if you are operating on the default password, other people may not access your router if they are not connected to your network or router.

If you haven’t changed the admin password thus far, you need to change the password. You will notice that the default admin password is indicated on the back of the router. The default password may be “admin” or “password”. You may find that your router may not have a default password.

For you to access the router remotely on the internet, you need to change the default admin password for security and privacy. The process for changing the admin password is as follows:

  • Using the private IP address login into the router. The IP address is indicated on the router’s box or on the manufacturer’s website. The default password is 192.168.1.1, 192.168.0.1, 10.0.1.1, or as indicated on your router.
  • Type the IP address on the address bar of your browser. You should do this on a computer connected to the router via Ethernet connection or Wi-Fi. This will bring a login page.
  • On the login page, enter the admin username and password. The action will give you access to the web user interface.
  • On the web user interface, you can change the password of your router. You can follow these steps to change the router’s password.

Enable login from internet or WAN

After changing the router admin password for security and privacy, the next step is to allow for remote access. This will be done on the router’s web management interface.

To enable remote login for your router, you will have to change the router settings. You need to check for the settings options that enable login from the internet. Thus you will go to the advanced settings for your router on the web user interface.

The settings for remote access will either be labeled “Allow login from WAN” or “Allow login from the internet”. However, you need to check the settings that are specific to your router.

If you can’t locate the settings for your router, you can check the description of the setting from the manufacturer or check it on the internet. To check the settings configuration for your router from the internet, you can search as follows: “Router model + login from WAN”.

Enable logging and notifications

Depending on your router, you may get this option or not. Therefore, it is not a must for you to enable this function on your router.

You will find these settings on the web user interface. You will find the admin / advanced settings section of the router’s web user interface settings. On the settings, try and find “logging” or “notifications”. Other routers have a similar word to describe this process.

Thus, in this section, you can enable logging and notifications according to your preference. Thus when someone accessed your Wi-Fi the router will notify the admin. This may happen on email, on the app, or when the admin logs into the web user interface.

You can easily use the information to monitor WiFi usage in your home. Thus you can keep your router secure even without a password and ensure users use the internet when it is allowable.

Determine the public IP address for your router

Your router normally has a private and public IP address. In our case, we are choosing the public IP address. 
An IP address gives the location and the ability to find your devices when online. You use it to send and receive data over the internet.

Therefore, for you to access the router from the internet, you need to use the following methods to know your router’s public IP address:

Using what is my public IP address to access your router from the internet even remotely
  • By finding out the IP address on your router web user interface or app. It is easy to find the public IP address when you login into the web user interface or app. On the user interface, you can find the address on the “Status” page or tab. Once you locate the status tab/ page, you will be able to easily find the ‘WAN” or “Internet” IP address.
  • You can also search it on a IP finder website. By asking such a website, you are able to easily determine the public IP address. You can use any “what is my IP address” websites as shown above. Some of the websites that can show you the IP address include Google, IP chicken among others.

Related posts: How To Move Your Router to Another Room

Kindly note down the public IP address for future use

Note down the IP address as identified by any of the methods above. You will use the IP address to access the router remotely on the internet. It is important to note that the public IP address can change from time to time. The change is because the residential ISPs use DHCP instead of the static IP address for network identification.

However, the change in IP address is not a problem when you want to remotely access the router. This is because you can use dynamic DNS (DDNS) for your router identification. The DDNS will update automatically when your IP address changes.

Setting a DDNS enables you to connect to your router using a hostname such as “petersresidence.no-IP” rather than using the normal IP address such as 41.74.250.80.

Therefore the DDNS server will update the public IP address automatically whenever the “petersresidence.no-IP” resolves to every time it changes.

Make a test on another internet connection

To know if you have the correct details, it is good to test the functionality. You need to test it on a network that is different from your home network.

This means that you can either use your phone hotspot to check if your remote access works. You can also connect your computer to a neighbor’s connection or work internet connection for the test.

Once you get another source of internet, you will need to conduct the test for remote access as follows:

  1. On a web browser on your computer, type in the public IP address. You can also use a DDNS qualified domain name. Once you key in the IP address press enter.
  2. This will give you a login page for your router’s network. However, if it doesn’t introduce “http://” or “https://” before the IP address.
  3. On the login page, type in your admin name and password. This will give you access to the router’s web user interface.
  4. On this web user interface you can see and manage the devices connected to your router and also change some of the router’s settings.

Access the router remotely

Once you are sure that the remote access is working for your router’s network, you can log in and access your router from the internet anywhere. The process that we have described here will work for accessing your router even if you are on the other side of the globe.

Does this work on all routers?

As we have described in the process, the steps will work for most routers. You will definitely be able to get access to Arris, Netgear, Belkin, Xfinity, AT&T, TP-Link, Linksys, and Sky routers among others remotely by following the steps described here.

There will be a slight difference in the labeling of various steps for different routers but the steps are majorly the same. Therefore, you just need to find the label for the step the means almost the same as the one described here.

In case you get any challenges, you can check the steps with your router manufacturer’s customer care. This will ensure you don’t miss any step in the remote access for your router.

Conclusion

It is really important in this day and age to have the ability to access your router from the internet remotely. This will ensure that you can check what is happening at home and enhance security and privacy.

For the best remote access protection, you may need to enable a VPN and also ensuring that there is WEP/ WPA protection. This in effect ensures that any entry into your router is safe and from a source allowed to!

Finally, you may decide to use TeamViewer for access to your devices remotely.