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Accessing and Checking Your Wi-Fi Router History
The internet inspires almost everything we do; we use it to control our smart homes from devices.
However, monitoring children, students, or employees online can be challenging, especially when everyone knows how to clear their browsing history.
This is why we will cover how to check the Wi-Fi router history in this article.
After reading this article, you will learn how to check the visited websites’ IP addresses through your router.
You can either do this via a WiFi history viewer or go to your PC and check the router history on the router’s log.
Using Your Browser to Check Wifi Router History
You can utilize a standard web browser to connect to your router and enter a username and password to access the data on the device’s log.
This data includes IP addresses, access dates, and the amount of data transferred.
Depending on the router, you may need to turn on the logging feature to access this data later.
Look it up in the manual that came with your router or online or if your ISP company provided your router, contact them for more details.
You can also contact the ISP provider for a log of your router if all else fails, as they can access the details.
However, instead of going through that tricky process, you can check the router’s activity logs yourself.
How To Check Wi-Fi Router History
How to Check the Wi-Fi Router History for Visited Websites
Step 1.
On your PC browser, type your IP address, which is an 8-digit number. This number is found by checking the router manually,
- Click Run,
- Type CMD
- Click OK
how to check Wi-Fi router history – Run
- Type IPCONFIG/ALL. Allow the Command Prompt to execute your command. Scroll to Default Gateway. Parallel to Default Gateway is a string of numerical digits, which are your IP address.
how to check Wi-Fi router history – CMD
- Copy and paste these numbers into a web browser to open the router settings.
Step 2.
After entering the IP address, you will be taken to your router’s dashboard, depending on the type of router you own.
Sign in via your admin login details. Again, these are on the manual, or you can check at the bottom of your wireless router.
Step 3.
On your router dashboard’s homepage, you will see the Wi-Fi history viewer and log settings. Proceed to check your router’s history.
Before you scan the logs, find out each connected device’s IP address. Check under Attached Devices or another name, depending on your device.
The log will show:
- Date and time of the entry
- Source IP, which is the IP of the device that initiated a search
- Target address, which is the IP address or website name visited
- Action that happened, whether access was denied or allowed.
Wifi Router History Limitations
A router may be unable to access the exact details of the viewed websites. This is because various servers across different sites can share IP addresses, and the IP addresses may be similar.
An IP address is a code, like a Social Security number, used to identify computers.
An IP address lookup tool is needed to look up IP addresses. Mac and Linux use the command line tools “dig” and “host,” and Windows uses “nslookup.”
Online tools are also available to make sense of the IP address, deciphering it to one the human eye can read.
Due to encryption, the router cannot access the files, webpages, or images accessed by PCs and devices on your Wi-Fi network.
You may get a rough idea of the visited sites but cannot prove what content was viewed.
If the people you are trying to check up on have installed VPN Tor browsers or are browsing incognito, checking on their activities may be more challenging.
These tools mask a device’s IP address, making it hard to tell which site accessed it.
Final Thoughts
The internet is a significant part of our lives. We use it for everything, but it can make employees and children unproductive unless checked.
If you want to prevent certain people from accessing some sites, the best thing you can do is apply filters. At the same time, you may want to know if any device attempted to bypass the filters.
Logging into the Wi-Fi router’s history will tell you much more about the visited sites than a simple browser history check.
It may not give you all the details, but you will get the IP addresses of each visited site and the actions taken by the Internet.
See Also
How to change the Wi-Fi router channel
