Using Static IP Addresses on Private Networks

In this video, we will talk about assigning static or permanent IP addresses to your network computers and devices. This is much of a theoretical lesson than practical, so you need to listen with patience. When organizing your home or office network, it is much easier to manually assign each computer a static IP address of its own, instead of using DHCP settings. DHCP stands for, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, which automatically assign IP addresses to connected network computers. By default, in Windows, network adapters are set to obtain IP address automatically, so if there are DHCP settings configured, then your network computers will automatically obtain an IP address.

But the problem with receiving an automatic IP address from DHCP configuration depends on, first come first serve basis. That means, each computer request and be assigned an address, every time it’s booted up. So, which one will be booted first, will get an IP address first. Even though computer will assigned addresses automatically, but they will not be static. For instance, a computer having an IP address of 192.168.1.110, may be assigned a different address on next boot up.

If you have several computers and devices in your home or office network, then assigning them a static or, permanent IP address is a good idea. While troubleshooting network problems, it’s annoying to move to each machine to know what IP address they have. Having Static IP address in networks also prevents conflicts between devices, and you can manage network computers more easily.

You can easily assign a Static IP to a network computer by changing the LAN adapter settings from Network and Sharing Center. Then manually enter the IP address from TCP / IP Protocol. But this might cause a conflict, if the same IP address is given to another computer or devices in same network, and for an organization having hundreds of computer in network environment, it is not a good idea to manually enter the IP addresses.

In this tutorial will configure the router to automatically assign a fixed IP to a particular computer or device, having a certain MAC address. MAC, Media Access Control addresses, also called the physical addresses, are unique identifier codes assigned to network interface cards or devices, for communications on the network. MAC addresses are most often assigned by the manufacturer, and are stored in the device hardware. Assigning IP addresses based on device’s MAC addresses, will make the IP address permanent, unless you change them yourself. When you send or receive data over network, then computers are identified by their IP addresses, and which IP address correspond to which computer is identified by the MAC address.

To change or configure the router settings, first you need to know, how you can access them? You can find the instructions in the documentation that comes with the router. Mostly, the login link, user name and password are also printed to the back side of the router. Do remember, this tutorial is just for information purpose, as different routers are configured differently. This tutorial will give you a little bit idea about how to set the things up?

For instance, I can access my TP Link router settings by opening, 192.168.1.1 in any web browser, and the default user name and password are, admin.

Before I start assigning static IP Addresses to my network computers and devices, let’s first see, how my router is already distributing the IP addresses? So, I click the DHCP link from the left side pane, and under DHCP Settings, you can see that DHCP server is enabled. Here you can also specify the numbers of total IP addresses that you want to distribute by assigning Starting and Ending IP Addresses. As I have assigned 100 to 130, that means, 31st device will not be able to connect to my network, as the maximum limit of distributing IP addresses is set to 30. The address lease time is set to 120 minutes by default, which means, if my network devices does not have static IP addresses, then a network user will be allowed to keep connecting to the router for the specified minutes with the current DHCP address. The default gateway is the same address that I use to access my router settings, and the other computers and devices in my network will have the same gateway address, as they are connected through this gateway.

I can see a list of the connected computers and devices in my network by clicking on DHCP Clients List. Here you can see the Client Name, the MAC or Physical address of the device, and IP address assigned to them.  If the IP addresses are not permanent then you will see the time duration under lease time, else for permanent IPs, lease time does not matter.

As you can see the list of devices currently connected with my network, where I have already assigned proper names for network computers, but the IP addresses are not in order. For instance, I want 192.168.1.101 for network computer K C I – PC 1, then 192.168.1.102 for network computer K C I – PC 2, and so on. So it will become very easy for me to remember the IP addresses, as they will be according to computer names, like 101 for PC 1, 102 for PC 2, and so on.

What I need to do now is to, set the address reservation for particular MAC addresses, which I can do by clicking on Addresses Reservation link. To allot a permanent IP address to a particular MAC address, I click on Add New button. Here I only need to fill three fields, the MAC address of the device, the IP address that I want to reserve for that particular device, or either I want to enable that specific entry for now, or not.

So, first I copy the MAC address of the device from the DHCP Client List. Do remember that, DHCP client list will only show those devices which are already connected to my network. If you are setting up a new network for the first time, then you need to move to that particular computer, and have to write down the physical address or MAC address. Which you can check either by, opening the properties of Local Area Network, or, you can run IP CONFIG /ALL command at command prompt.

Once you note down the MAC address of a particular computer, type the address, in MAC address field and then, assign a Reserved IP Address for that particular computer, which should be in the range of Start IP and End IP addresses. For now, let the status enabled and then click Save button. By repeating the same steps, I will assign permanent IP Addresses to each and every computer and device in my network.

Once I finished adding all the devices, I need to reboot the router for the configuration to take effect, which you can either do from System Tools link, or you can turn off and turn on the router again.

After restarting the router, you can check the configuration in DHCP Client List to see if all the devices have the permanent addresses as you wanted.

As I said earlier, there are a lot of benefits of assigning permanent IP addresses to network devices, and one of them is controlling network bandwidth. Our next tutorial will be about, Controlling Internet Bandwidth and Speed over network, which is only possible if my network devices have fixed IP Addresses.

Hope you may have found some new and interesting information in this tutorial. If you think this video is useful then don’t forget to share it with your friends. Thanks for watching, and do subscribe to our channel for more upcoming videos. Bye for now, and take care!