Can I force a computer on my network to have a static IP while retaining DHCP for all other computers?

Question

Simply put, I have a home network with 7 clients connecting to the Internet through one wireless router.

So far I've had it all run on DHCP and all IPs are assigned dynamically and seamlessly.

I now need to force one of the computers to have a static internal IP. The others can continue getting dynamic IPs.

In other words, one of my computers needs a static IP on the network, but the others do not and I do not wish to change anything to their settings.

I need to know if I can tell the "static" computer to just "steal" an IP for itself, e.g. 192.168.1.2, and tell the router to start assigning IPs through DHCP to the other computers starting from 192.168.1.3.

Ideally the end result should be that my one computer now has a static IP and the "move" is completely transparent to all the other computers/users involved.

Is that possible?

Answer 1

Yes.

Better yet, if you have a decent router, is to tell the router to always assign the same ip address to the computer with the MAC address you want to have the static ip.

This means you can do all your configuration on the router itself.

Answer 2

There are a couple of ways of going about this.

With most DHCP servers, there is a way to reserve an IP address that will always be assigned to a hardware address (MAC address).  Every network card has a hardware address.  Sometimes it is printed someplace on the card.  Or if the computer is running Microsoft Windows open a command prompt and enter the command ipconfig /all

This will return the hardware address.

Open the DHCP server, usually located in your router, and reserve the address to the hardware address of the device that you want to always have the same address.  DHCP will then always assign the same IP address to this device.

Or you could just statically enter an IP address into the computers network address that is outside the range of addresses assigned by your DHCP server.  For example you could set your DHCP server to use addresses 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.50.  Assign the static IP address of 192.168.1.55 to the PC that you want to have the static address.  Remember to assign the subnet mask and DNS server information.  You can get this by going to any other computer on your network that receives its IP address by DHCP and running the ipconfig /all command as you did before.

Answer 3

yes ...

you can do it ... all you need to say your router is to assign static ip 192.168.1.X to a computer that is having xx:xx:xx:xx MAC id !!! ....

that is it ...

Answer 4

David is right - the best way is to have a router that can reserve an IP address.

If you do not have this the compromise is as follows. You need to determine the range of the routers IP address pool and the order it assigns addresses. You then reserve an address at the opposite end of the pool. So if the pool is 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.35 and they are assigned upwards, you choose 192,168.0.35. This is the safest address to ask your PC to force.

You force this choice in the adapter properties by turning off the option to Obtain IP address automatically.

Answer 5

a even easier way is to go to the nic card of the pc and enter the tcpip in there simply set the ip u want the gateway is the ip of the router  as is the primary dns , very easy