There is a comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.networking newsgroup that would've
been a more appropriate group to post in. But anyway, you'll know better
next time.
Smarty wrote:
> I am using an older and very stable Linksys WRT54G router and have DHCP
> enabled for the clients. One of my router's current DHCP clients is a video
> server which gets a fresh IP address occasionally when the router or video
> server is re-booted.
> This creates a problem, since the 8 video clients which connect to this
> video server have very limited ability to recover from changes to the video
> server IP address change. They are small embedded Hauppauge media boxes
> which cannot easily find the revised video server address, and have no way
> to easily reboot themselves from the video server.
> I would like to fix the video server IP address to a static IP outside the
> range of the Linksys router DHCP server, but still in the same subnet as
> the
> router. Specifically, I would like to put the video server at 192.168.1.150
> as a static IP address, and only allow the DHCP server in the Linksys to
> serve addresses from 192.168.1.100 through 192.168.1.149.
Yeah, it's something called by the oxymoronic name of Static DHCP
("/Static Dynamic/ Host Configuration Protocol"). Basically it's a way
to have a specific client or clients get assigned the same IP address
everytime. It's taking the Dynamic in DHCP and making it less dynamic.
However, there is no reason to even use DHCP if all you want is static
IPs. So you can just as easily hard code the IP address info into its
configuration.
> This should allow my 8 video clients to ALWAYS see their video server at
> 192.168.1.150 regardless of whether the router had to be re-booted or the
> video server had to be rebooted.
> Is there any reason why I can't do this? I am specifically concerned that
> the Linksys will only route to those addresses it has dynamically assigned
> via DHCP, and will not route to those above that range.
> Is this a legitimate concern?
No, not a legitimate concern at all. The routing functions of the router
are a totally separate feature from its DHCP services. As long as you
know the router address and the DNS address (usually the same as the
router address for home routers), then you can ignore the DHCP services.
You can just hard code the video server to 192.168.1.150, and its
default gateway will be 192.168.1.1 (usually the case if the network
address is in the 192.168.1.x range), and also its DNS server will be
192.168.1.1. With these three IP addresses, you can totally receive all
of the same services from the router as any other client configured
through DHCP.
We're very spoiled by DHCP, it's a form of auto-configuration that in
the end isn't all that complicated to emulate by manual configuration.
Yousuf Khan
