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Forum Discussion
foobarbaz
Dec 03, 2021Follower
Where is the management page?
I just unpacked the brand new night hawk AX5200/RAX48 wifi 6 router. Trying to set it up using the desktop web browser. Physically connected the router with the ethernet cable on one of the LAN por...
fo0barbaz
Dec 05, 2021Tutor
Sorry I was bit frustrated and felt like Netgear is forcing their app on us. I just don't want to install an another app on my phone and let it collect data.
I figured out my issue now. The setup doc tells you to connect the WAN port on the router directly to the modem. I didn't want to do that since the router is brand new and not configured yet. The setup instruction should have made it clear that the router needs internet connection for setup.
Since my PC has two NICs, I directly ran a CAT6 cable from one of the NICs to the LAN port on the router. This allowed me to browse 192.168.1.1 but for some reason it redirected to the site I mentioned on my original post instead of the www.routerlogin.net. Now I have the WAN port (yellow) on nighthawk connected to one of the LAN port on my old router. My laptop is on nighthawk's LAN port and received an ip in 192.168.1.x block from DHCP. The router can now access the www.routerlogin.net for setup which raises another question.
Why does the router that sits literally three feet away from me need access to www.routerlogin.net for setup? The site prompts me to enter an admin password for the router. Why would I enter a password for my router on a site that presumably belongs to netgear?
- FURRYe38Dec 05, 2021Guru - Experienced UserBecause that's the web page address of the router on the LAN side, not the WAN side! All routers have this address. Been like this for a while.
- fo0barbazDec 05, 2021Tutor
Thanks. Found that the router maps the management IP to www.routerlogin.net and possibily www.routerlogin.com. While it's convenient, I think this could potentially be a huge security risk when the router hasn't properly mapped the ip. A malicious site could spoof the url and content of the router page to gain as much info about the router config as it can. The least Netgear could've done is use an unused top-lelvel domain like routerlogin.netgear or routerlogin.local to help with preventing the spoof. I would think *.local is more appropriate in this case.
I'm finding little nuggets like this and really don't feel that confident about the netgear line of products.
- FURRYe38Dec 05, 2021Guru - Experienced User
One can use 192.168.1.1 as well to get to the routers web page after it's set up.
Most router mfrs have the url host name as well. Seen this across many brands.