In my home network, there is a Fritz!Box (7262 SL) that is silently doing its job (managing DECT phones) for years. Every now and then I need to login, so I went to the web page by typing the IP address in my browser.

Then, the login screen showed a form with a username and a password. Back in the days, the default admin login was without the username but with a password only.

After googling around, I tried a few combinations with admin, administrator, root together with my admin password, but no luck. Even the magic trick “have you tried turning it off and on again?” did not work.

So i had a look at the landing page of the Fritz!Box login. There is a data object that has some interesting hints to solve the riddle. The Fritz!Box does not show which version it actually is. Moreover the showUser and the fromInternet variables are true.

This is it! The device which I used to connect to the Fritz!Box was in a different subnet of my home network. Thus, the Fritz!Box notices an IP range from outer space and a different login page is rendered.

var data = {
  // ...
  bluBarTitle: "FRITZ!Box",
  fromInternet: true,
  showUser: true,
  //...
};

The Fritz!Box has a fallback IP address 169.254.1.1 which is only reachable if you are connected either directly to one of the LAN ports or if you are in the same subnet, e.g. the same wired network. I couldn’t reach that one either.

Alright, I wired up my device to the same network, got a proper IP that did not look like “the internet”, and then, the login page looks more familiar and only the password field was showing. The dataobject on the login page looks better now

var data = {
  //...
  bluBarTitle: "FRITZ!Box 7362 SL",
  fromInternet: false,
  showUser: false,
  //...
};

So, never forget where you are coming from…