So I currently live in my mom's office building which has an asinine internet and networking setup utilizing 4 huge allied telesyn switches and two cisco routers, one for internet and one for telephony. I've recently acquired a waffles.fm account and I need to be connectible in order to increase my ratio and not waste it, since it's relatively hard to get an account there. The problem is the previous people left a mess of the whole configuratory shizzle, leaving me with no documentation whatsoever to handle accessing the router, much less opening up ports or whatnot. Therefore I am requesting aid.

Reseting the router does fuk all as the configuration remains the same, the default values for username and password are not working, presumably because the morons changed it for no apparent reason, especially considering the people that work here can barely manage to power on their workstations, much less access the bloody thing. It is by no means a standard router, therefore leaving me in the dust as I have no experience accessing said advanced devices, only standard routers specifically made to be user friendly.

This is the only helpful thing I could find and I do not understand a word of it, as it exceeds my knowledge severely. Any help would be appreciated. My networking experience is relatively lacking as I can only manage to setup a network and basic printer/file-sharing using a standard router, not a networking monolith.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/routers/ac....html#wp1038328

Please advise, and do keep in mind I'm a relatively mediocre user. The router in question is a Cisco 851.

Well, if you have telnet access to the router and its IOS, and there is already a Privileged Exec mode password set (this can be checked by trying to enter said mode via the 'enable' command from the lower User Exec mode), then AFAIK, the only way to reset the passwords is to clear the startup configuration file, effectively clearing all configurations made for that router (this includes all routing protocols, routing tables, IP addresses and subnet masks, et al.) - and reloading the entire IOS from factory settings.

is this what you wish to do, or does the router actually have a critical role, in the sense that wiping everything would get you some serious flak?

Of course, if you can't access the router IOS via telnet (asking for username/password on the go), you might as well be stuck.

Other than the fact that I did not understand the first 20% of what you said, wiping it's configuration file would cause the entire office building to be without internets. Normally I'd be able to configure it back up to normal, with a user-friendly router this would be easy, I'd just have to find out the IPs given to the office building by the ISP.

I've never used telnet, I think I read some years ago what it was used for but atm I can't recall. No clue what IOS is. Alls I know is trying to get to it via entering 192.168.1.1 in my browser provides me with a message asking me for a username and password with a privilege level of 15. I know this from being able to configure other, more user-friendly routers. I really only know how to configure routers via browser access.

Normally, when I press the little button every router seems to have with a pen or something, their configurations will reset to factory settings and I'd have to reconfigure them. I tried doing the same to this one but it didn't work, as I still have internet access.

Now, I'm still hoping that once inside the bloody thing it would be relatively simple to reconfigure it up to working status, but the more I delve into this, the more I'm starting to think this may be a monster of a router used for professional level networking.

It's a security liability to leave the default password on. It works both ways, easy access in and out.

Well obviously, but I wouldn't be that retarded not to leave behind some documentation or whatnot.

Ask the sysadmin :V

I AM the sysadmin.

Did the folks who set up the router leave an install disc? Those can usually be used to change the password or reset to the default password.

By the way, I wouldn't worry much about being "connectible" if I were you. It just means that others who aren't connectible (and only them) cannot leech from you or seed right back to you. So, if you notice your torrents idling, then there's nothing wrong. It'll usually be a while before you get any leechers. Hell, I don't even reach power user at the sites I use until there's some big free leech and I get a lot of leeches. All you should worry about is not landing on ratio watch.