static ip do i set up on router or device

[RobTi]

Hi i have got a static ip from my isp and would like to set up fixed addresses for my devices and after reading some people say just set up the router and leave the devices others say set up differently.

So i hope you get what i mean and what would be the best way to set them up

Thanks

[kalniel]

Your static IP is only for how your house connection is presented to the outside world. Follow the instructions from your ISP for how to set up your router correctly. Devices within your house will get an internal IP address from the router.

[jimborae]

Your static IP is only for how your house connection is presented to the outside world. Follow the instructions from your ISP for how to set up your router correctly. Devices within your house will get an internal IP address from the router.

Well if he really wants to set up fixed IP addresses for devices in the house then that's not really appropriate either but I guess it depends on why the OP want's fixed addresses for devices in the house.

There are multiple ways to do this depending on the OP's requirements and type of router being used. As Kalniel says for the static IP from the ISP follow their instructions assuming they provided the router. Then the choice is how you do it for devices in your house. The way I do it is all fixed devices in the house have a static IP address, all mobile devices have dynamic. The way I've done this is to change the IP address range allocation in router and then just assign IP address on the fixed devices in the range below which the router starts dishing them out.

i.e. between 192.168.1.2 - 192.168.1.49 I assign static IP's on the devices themselves
between 192.168.1.50 - 192.168.1.250 the router assigns IP's via DHCP

There are other ways to do things depending on the type of router you have e.g. mine has a function where by it will always assign the same IP address to same MAC address but I find the way I do it simpler and easier for me to control and keep track of.

[kalniel]

Yeah, it's not like the outside world can see the device IPs even if you fix them, but if it's a case of setting up a firewall rule/port forwarding etc. then you might prefer to have reserved IPs for the devices. Check the router help information/your ISP for how to do that - it can be as simple as clicking 'reserve this IP for this device' once one has been assigned, or you can do it manually in most cases.

[peterb]

If you only has one static IP address, there is little option other than use NAT to connect multiple devices on the LAN side. If you want static IP addresses on the LAN side (which can be useful if you are running a webserver or mail server) you can either set a static IP address on the computer itself or use the router's DHCP server to tie the computers MAC address to an IP address.

If you have multiple public IP addresses, then you may have the option of assigning a public IP address to a device on the LAN (depending on your router) or (as other posters have said, you can port forward traffic on a specific external IP address to a specific computer on the lan.

[RobTi]

Thanks i have a couple of devices (server,satellite box) that i ftp into and was finding that after a while the addresses could change so what i was doing was setting the devices up with a fixed ip then doing the same with the router and then setting up port forwarding, but then read somewhere that you should just set up the router and leave the devices alone and the router would assign the addresses to them.

Thanks

[Scainer]

I use a combination of the suggestions due to laziness. I have a reduced DHCP range, which has some reserved IP addresses in the router, and I have some devices configured with static IP addressing that is outside the dynamic range.

[scaryjim]

As kalniel says, most routers actually have a "reserve this address for this device" setting you can use when you log in and view the list of attached devices. That means you don't have to worry about setting static IPs on the devices themselves, and don't have to mess with the router DHCP server settings to avoid IP collision: just tick the box, click save, and the router remembers the device MAC address and always gives it the same IP. Then you can set up port forwarding to the appropriate IP address.

When you say you FTP to the devices, do you do that from outside your home network or from inside? If it's from outside then you'll need to set up different incoming ports on the router to redirect to different devices, and you'll need to add the appropriate port number to the ip address when you invoke FTP - if you just forward the default FTP port you'll only be able to FTP to one device. Also, make sure you're fully aware of the security implications of forwarding ports for things like FTP into your home network: you're basically creating an open door, and you *will* get hacking attempts.