Switching to a static IP (within your network)

[StringCheesian]

Switching to a static IP (within your network) by a dummy for dummies

If you're reading this, you're probably using a dynamic IP with DHCP - especially if you just followed the install instructions and emerged dhcpcd. This means Gentoo asks your router to assign it an IP address every time you connect or boot, just like a default Windows install does.

A static IP is when you set an IP address to use. A static IP means others on your home/work network can connect to you using the same IP that their browser/ftp client remembers for them. It also frees you from DHCP and the 2 or so seconds of delay it typically involves.

Step 1: Find out what kind of IP addresses your router gives out
Open a terminal and type:

[muhsinzubeir]

great guide thanks....I have seen occasionally some router support static ip, if thats an option to someone
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[MaximeG]

Hi,

I usually use StaticIP for my desktops PC at home even if my routeur provides DHCP, so thanks for the guide

Regards,
Maxime
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[danomac]

Just a tip: you should really set your dns servers as well:

[furanku]

Wouldn't it be much better to solve the problem at it's source: The router?

Most routers offer a configuration option to assign static IPs to clients by identifying them via their MAC Address. If you assign an arbitrary IP to you Linux box the way you suggest it, you are still depending on the routing tables of your router (that's why it's called "router" ) and you can't guarantee that the router itself will treat self assigned IPs in your subnet the way you want. If several persons in your subnet assign the same IP to their computers you'll surely run into problems. There are several methods to assign a IP to a network device: DHCP, zeroconf, ... which avoid collisions.

But if you want a static IP you need a central instance which guarantees that that IP is unique in you network. You can either do that by hand, but most routers offer also exactly that feature: Give the network device with the mac adress XX:XX:XX:XX:XX exactly that IP. You can even still use dhcp and don't have to care about that when configuring the actual network devices, they will be automatically assigned the correct static IP by your router. If you add another device with a static IP, simply expand that table in you router, and you don't need to fiddle around with the devices, which mostly have a default setup to use dhcp.

Especially when you want to use a service like ssh from outside of you local network, you need to tell the router to forward the packets to which IP in your local network, and then you have to involve your router into the configuration of your network anyway. So I would say it's much cleaner, straight forward and easier to maintain to let the router do the work.

[StringCheesian]

[MaximeG]

Hi,

Personnally I like having my desktops and servers configured statically because they are very unlikely to change. It's not really a matter of gaining a couple seconds at boot, but more to be able to have a very easy and straight forward config file for the network. Something like :

ip1 name1
ip2 name2

This file you can reuse if you re-install or change router or anything. It's also easy to configure firewall this way.
The motto is : my network is static, so I configure it statically

However, my laptop is configured to use dhcp since it's very likely to connect elsewhere (noticeably at work) with a complete different set-up.

Now, I'm not a network maniac. So the simpler the better, even if it's very "manual", is usually what I aim to while dealing with network at home.
My view would be completely different at work with high availability of servers and stuff though

Regards,
Maxime
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[danomac]

[furanku]

Hmm ... I've had two Netgear Router (currently a WG 614 for 35€) and one D-Link, all in the lower price category, and all of them were able to assign IPs statically to MAC Adresses via dhcp. To be honest I can't think of a usual private customer class route without that feature, can you be a bit more specific which one is missing that?

[danomac]

[furanku]

Ok, sorry, I couldn't believe that but after downloading the manual for the Linksys wrt54g it seems like this router is in fact missing the IMHO useful feature to assign fixed IPs via dhcp via identifiying the client by its MAC address. In that case you have of course to turn off dhcp at the cliened and assign manually a static IP to it, if you want to use that.

[danomac]

[MaximeG]

Hi,

As far as I'm concerned, this feature is called "MAC address preference". Which means that if your router receive a request from MAC address 1, it will give back an IP and keep the preference MAC-IP in a file. This means that if you disconnect the client, and connect it a while later, it's very likely to receive the same IP.

Actually, it will always return the same IP address for the same MAC unless forced to do so (for instance if you exhaust your dhcp ip pool ) which is very unlikely if you're speaking of home network.
Such functionality is widely spread on nowadays routers, and never seen a dhcp capable routeur without MAC address preference. Ok, I've only used Linksys,D-Link and Philips routers so far, so I can't tell for other brands. But it's honestly a very common feature.

Regards,
Maxime
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[slycordinator]

[Tony0945]

D-Link DI-524 does this. In fact, you can tell the router to not connect to a MAC address that is not in the table, useful for security reasons. The 524 is no longer made but was a cheap router. I can't believe that D-Link's successor routers don't have the static IP feature.

It's still advantageous to set up static ip on your gentoo box and enter the addresses in your /etc/hosts.

I don't want to start a flame war, but I first bought a Linksys router and it wouldn't connect. I brought it back to Best Buy who gave me the D-link (same price) in exchange because they were out of stock on the Linksys.

[spofforth]

[Tony0945]

[pietinger]

[Tony0945]

pietinger,
Good catch.
But the example said " Mask:255.255.0.0 " You are correct for. 255.255.255.0
OP should double check his router to see if it gives out 256 (really 254) or 65,536 (really 65,534)
If it's an eight bit range, investigate whether the default address is changeable.
My DLINK's default is 192.168.0.1.
My Edgerouter's uses 192.168.1.1 I changed it to 192.168.0.2 .
Changing the default is a PITA because often other things need to be changed. I have lots of devices so I did it.
If yopu have fewer than five devices, just change your devices.

First check your Router's manual does it really give 65,000 addresses?

[Hu]

OP may not have that router anymore. Prior to spofforth's raising this thread from the dead, the most recent post was from Tony back in 2009.

[Tony0945]

[pietinger]

[Tony0945]

Yes, the Edgerouter is Linux based. The DLINK was highly rated in it's day.