IP Address on Home Network

[STMahlberg]

How do I manually assign IP addresses to each of my machines so they won’t change when they reboot?

The reason I want to do this is because I use BOINC Tasks to manage my systems; unfortunately, when my systems reboot they tend to change IP addresses. Each time they change, I have to change the information in BOINC Tasks to match. This is becoming a pain since I have to change all of the remote_hosts.cfg on each machine as well.

[Bryan]

For Vista and IIRC Win7 do this:

Nework and Sharing Center
Manage Network connections
Right click on your LAN Connection
Choose Properties
Left click (highlight) Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPV4)
Click Properties
Click Use the following IP Address
Enter the address you want; ie 192.168.0.5
Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0
Default gateway ... put in your router's address (usually 192.168.0.1) You can find it by going to the DOS prompt and doing ipconfig

Do that for each of your computers and reboot them. They will always come up with the same IP address. If your router is setup for DHCP (which it is) it isn't a problem unless you have either a computer that you want to continue to obtain its IP automatically -or- occaisonally you let someone tie a laptop or something in.

In that case, go into the router setup and give it a RANGE for DHCP that doesn't include IP of the computers you have on fixed account. For example, on my systems I have fixed IP from 192.168.0.X where X is from 1 to 5. I set the router to start automatic assignment at .10. That way my wife's laptop or kindle will never be assigned one of my "reserved" IPs if I happen to have one of the crunchers turned off when either of those 2 are connected to the network and assigned an IP.

To see your computers info, go to Command Prompt (DOS prompt) under the Windows Accessories Folder. At the prompt type; ipconfig and then hit Enter. It will show you your current IP address and the Default Gateway which is the address of your router.

[STMahlberg]

For Vista and IIRC Win7 do this:

Nework and Sharing Center
Manage Network connections
Right click on your LAN Connection
Choose Properties
Left click (highlight) Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPV4)
Click Properties
Click Use the following IP Address
Enter the address you want; ie 192.168.0.5
Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0
Default gateway ... put in your router's address (usually 192.168.0.1) You can find it by going to the DOS prompt and doing ipconfig

Do that for each of your computers and reboot them. They will always come up with the same IP address. If your router is setup for DHCP (which it is) it isn't a problem unless you have either a computer that you want to continue to obtain its IP automatically -or- occaisonally you let someone tie a laptop or something in.

In that case, go into the router setup and give it a RANGE for DHCP that doesn't include IP of the computers you have on fixed account. For example, on my systems I have fixed IP from 192.168.0.X wehre X is from 1 to 5. I set the router to start automatic assingment at .10. That way my wife's laptop or kindle will never be assigned one of my "reserved" IPs if I happen to have one of the crunchers turned off when either of those 2 are connected to the network and assigned an IP.

Outstanding! Thank you very much Bryan.

[Bryan]

Outstanding! Thank you very much Bryan.

The lesson about moving the DHCP address range above my fixed IPs came the hard way. Several weeks ago I shut down a cruncher to blow the dirt out of the computer and GPU. When I rebooted Windows came up with a conflict of IP address error. I checked the IPs of all the computers and did everything I could think of. I even did a ping on that IP address and sure enough there way something there. So I shut down all of the computers and powered up the one with the error and the error still existed.

So I decided to get a cup of coffee and think what else I could do and I walked out on my deck and there sits my wife reading a book on her Kindle. BINGO!

[Fire$torm]

An alternative method is to assign static IP's from within your router since in most home networks it is the DHCP server anyway. Basically you define the range of usable IP's and then assign individual IP's to each systems MAC address. This way there will never be an IP conflict and everything gets assigned from a single location. Check your routers documentation for instructions. If you require assistance please post.

[Mumps]

An alternative method is to assign static IP's from within your router since in most home networks it is the DHCP server anyway. Basically you define the range of usable IP's and then assign individual IP's to each systems MAC address. This way there will never be an IP conflict and everything gets assigned from a single location. Check your routers documentation for instructions. If you require assistance please post.

Very good suggestion. And another advantage to that is you know everything on your network. With my wireless router, I configured it so it only has a large enough DHCP pool for the machines I know belong. So there are no addresses left if anybody driving by with a Wireless sniffer tries to get onto my network. And with each of the DHCPable addresses assigned to a specific MAC address, there's even less chance that someone can get in while one of the expected machines is powered off.

[Maxwell]

This stuff is good to know... Thanks for posting this, y'all!

[STMahlberg]

I set all of the IP address on my machines as described; however, I'm having still one issue with my host which I run BOINC tasks. It's IP won't stay put... I tried to set its IP address to 192.168.1.100 using the same procedure only to find out it really doesn't like it, so much so that I completely lose my internet connection.

So I changed it back to automatically assign an address to this machine, I made sure that I didn't assign my other machines or devices to use .100; I figure when I reboot my main system it will automatically grab the first free IP which is .100. Nope, it skips my free IP's which are .100, .104, .105 and it grabs .106.

I need my main system to stay on .100 so that the other machines can log into it when BOINC tasks is running. If not I have to continually modify the remote_hosts.cfg file on my 5 other systems.

I have no idea what to try.

[KaoticEvil[SETI.USA]]

I need my main system to stay on .100 so that the other machines can log into it when BOINC tasks is running. If not I have to continually modify the remote_hosts.cfg file on my 5 other systems.

You can use a hostname in remote_hosts.cfg as well.. That's what I did. I control my wife's system and my server form my rig. Just added the hostname (in my case, "pieces") to the file.

[STMahlberg]

You can use a hostname in remote_hosts.cfg as well.. That's what I did. I control my wife's system and my server form my rig. Just added the hostname (in my case, "pieces") to the file.

That was way too easy.

I just found out also that in BOINC Task where it asks for an IP address you can type in the name of your rig and it recognizes it but I bet you already knew that.

Thank you for the help.