Preventing external 'admin' logons to my router

[BATcher]

One of our three Netgear FVS114 ProSafe VPN Broadband Routers appears to have its IP address known to members of the hacker community (IP addresses in various Asia Pacific Network Information Centre Class A address ranges, mostly), so I am seeing repeated attempts to log into it as 'admin' each day from a small number of IP addresses, some of whom are quite persistent.

Other than perhaps making the admin password even more 'secure' than it already is, can I do anything to prevent access? I don't see any "ban this IP address from connecting" option in the router.

Should I upgrade from this £40 job (perfectly adequate and as solid as a rock) to something like the FVS318 at about £100, which promises more in the way of intrusion detection?

Any other thoughts welcomed, particularly from Netgear router experts!

[Leif]

If the address is 'known', would a simpler and cheaper alternative be to ask your ISP to change the IP address?

[BATcher]

Ummm yes, but you would not credit the hassle it took to get a fixed IP address in the first place!

As presumably automated IP address scanners are doing the hunting, I suspect that it might not take very long to detect a router logon screen when connecting to the new IP address?

[cbaldrey]

If you are able to determine the Port the scan is coming in on (www is typically port 80), I believe you could setup a rule to redirect all traffic accessing http://you.known.ip.address:80/adminlogin.html (or whatever) to http://127.0.0.1:80 - giving them nothing, or their own local error message.

[cbaldrey]

Just looked at the online version of the manual, and page 8-11 I think is what you're looking for.

PDF Manual

[BATcher]

Thanks, Christopher - I'll look into it! The link points to the Install Leaflet, but I've got the full PDF manual on my server, and undoubtedly also on CD...

[cbaldrey]

Well, I can't explain that BATcher. It was working when I left the link - and sure enough, it now points at the leaflet.

Just in case, this link is for the PDF manual (I think???).

[BATcher]

Yes, that's the one!