Re: Static IPs and WRT54gs?


I have printers and such on the network, I can't have their IP addies
changine all the time.
I don't need DHCP simply because this is going to be a small network at
my parent's house. A printer, two laptops and a desktop. I don't see
the point of DHCP unless there's a shitload of machines and it would
take an admin forever to goto each one - not to mention when the
network configurtion changes.
I tried DHCP with the current router - a BEFSR41, and the printer
jumped aroound. I don't know why. SO I went static.
Also, sometimes I have to forware ports to get IRC file transfers
working and junk like that.

It's odd their addresses changed. Most DHCP leases will renew to the same
IP address. I've not seen many situations where a device wouldn't get the
same address back again. But it could happen if you had more devices than
you had DHCP addresses, or you have lease times set too short. Strange, but
with low-end devices you never know.

Printers are a great candidate for having an address that doesn't change.
Note, this doesn't have to be a static address. Were you using a DHCP
server that'd let you make reservations it'd be able to always give a
particular address to a given hardware MAC address (the ethernet interface).
But since most low-end routers don't support DHCP reservations (the wrt54gs
can't unless you use other firmware like dd-wrt) your correct option is to
use static addresses. Even if it's a small network I'd still encourage you
to use DHCP addresses on things that don't 'need' to be static. Even if you
used all static addresses you might want to leave the DHCP service enabled.
This to allow the addition of other devices later, or the replacement of an
existing one, without having to go figure out the static addresses again.

Just make sure you assign the static addresses from outside any range the
DHCP server might hand out. The WRT54gs will work just fine this way.

-Bill Kearney

The point of DHCP is that it facilitates network management while
helping to avoid problems. Better to have fixed addresses handed out by
DHCP than to do the whole thing manually.

Well yeah, that's a staggeringly obvious statement. But one that does
nothing to answer the guy's problem, mainly because the firmware in those
devices can't DO THAT.

If you're not going to contribute an actual answer then why post at all?


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