Programmatically changing wireless router settings - Netgear ideally

Selenium offers a firefox plugin that lets you record manual interactions with your browser. And then you can export the steps to python, ruby, java or c#. It worked for me to programmatically adjust my router settings to turn off wifi. Clicking on the elements while recording identifies everything you need.

This code works on an Actiontec MI424WR (FIOS)
Edit the code to add your username, password, and router address.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import Select
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoAlertPresentException
import unittest, time, re

class Routr(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()
        self.driver.implicitly_wait(30)
        self.base_url = "http://routerip_or_address"
        self.verificationErrors = []
        self.accept_next_alert = True

    def test_routr(self):
        driver = self.driver
        driver.get(self.base_url + "/")
        driver.find_element_by_name("user_name").clear()
        driver.find_element_by_name("user_name").send_keys("your_username")
        driver.find_element_by_id("pass2").clear()
        driver.find_element_by_id("pass2").send_keys("enter_your_password_here")
        driver.find_element_by_link_text("OK").click()
        driver.find_element_by_link_text("Change Wireless Settings").click()
        driver.find_element_by_id("ws_off").click()
        driver.find_element_by_link_text("Apply").click()

    def is_element_present(self, how, what):
        try: self.driver.find_element(by=how, value=what)
        except NoSuchElementException, e: return False
        return True

    def is_alert_present(self):
        try: self.driver.switch_to_alert()
        except NoAlertPresentException, e: return False
        return True

    def close_alert_and_get_its_text(self):
        try:
            alert = self.driver.switch_to_alert()
            alert_text = alert.text
            if self.accept_next_alert:
                alert.accept()
            else:
                alert.dismiss()
            return alert_text
        finally: self.accept_next_alert = True

    def tearDown(self):
        self.driver.quit()
        self.assertEqual([], self.verificationErrors)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main()

There aren't any APIs out there to do this, but you can write something to make HTTP requests to the router to simulate the webUI being used.

I'm guessing most consumer routers are probably pretty simple to talk to. Authentication is probably nothing more than basic realm.

I'm unaware of any consumer-grade routers that have an API like that, but you could always build something that (ab)uses the Web interface to do what you want, using something like selenium-rc or watir

If this is just a few things you want to change programmatically, simulating HTTP requests should be simple enough. Another option would be to install DD-WRT in your router, basically transforming it into a small Linux installation that allows full programmatic configuration through SSH using standard Linux commands.