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Linksys WRT54G – NOT Retaining Security Settings

I have been trying to setup a router for my neighbor. It’s less than 30 days old and we can connect to it. The problem is when I attempt to tighten it up with the various security tweaks.

She originally ran the setup util on the cd and didn’t tell me… I spent an hour trying to get into the thing because I didn’t realize that she had already changed the admin password. Which brings me to another point… I am UNABLE to return the to factory defaults (where the user is blank and the password is admin).

When attempting to secure the wireless connection, I am able to assign the mac address restrictions where only two specific macs are allowed in. but when I take it any further (such as trying to select WEP or WPA) it simply will not let me. I can change the settings and hit save only to be defaulted back to a disabled setting.

As another point of interest, I wanted to use DHCP but allow only 4 ip’s to be available. The starting ip was going to be 192.168.10.41 thru 192.168.10.44 but as soon as I hit save settings, it reverts back to 192.168.10.1 with a minimum of 30 connections. I used xxx.xxx.10.xxx because the modem was defaulted to 192.168.1.1

This router is running the latest firmware available from the Linksys website – According the listing it’s WRT54G v6 but when it was applied it bump the version number from v1.0 to v1.10 as displayed on the router status page (when connecting via the web browser).

Btw, I have pushed the reset button on the back (which clear “my” personal Linksys routers at home) of the router and it does not reset factory defaults but I have NOT selected factory defaults inside the browser setup utility. I feared I would lose access completely so I didn’t make that change yet.

Any suggestion and / or comments would be greatly appreciated!

Possible Solutions:
the firewall suggested I made is a feasible solution. I've done it many times. You are wasting time by not trying it.