assign static IP's or use DHCP?

[minofifa]

Hi
I'm having a problem where whenever the internt connection to our house is down, the local home network does not function either. I think it has something to do with the router not being able to assign an IP address (my computers usually say "unable to obtain an IP address, contact your network admin").

I was wondering if if went into my routers setup and assigned static IP addresses to each computer, if this would allow my network to remain functional even if the internet is down. Is it as simple as picking some random IP address. How do i do it exactly? thanks a lot

 

[RichUK]

when this happens try to release and renew the IP address from your DHCP server on the router.

Open command prompt and enter "ipconfig /release" then after this has successfully completed type in "ipconfig /renew" (without the quotes of course). This should renew your IP address to the next available address.

I would try this first.

If your going static, then use 192.168.0 in the first three octets, and in the last octet use anything from 100 - 254 to define your host address (host being your workstation/laptop). You may find that your router reserves the first 0 - 99 for something else so just start from 100, also you cannot use 255 as this is reserved for broadcast.

 

[ktwebb]

You wouldn't assign static IP's at the router interface. This would be done on each workstation. You would disable the DHCP server on the router however. 192.168.0.x IF your router uses that segment. Some use 192.168.1.x or 10.x.x.x You could use 172.168.x.x for that matter and change the subnet completely on the router but it's easiest to just use the existing network ID. So if your router typically doles out 192.168.0.x then just go with that. Manually assign your IPs to the workstation, 192.168.0.2, .3, .4 etc.. Gateway would be the router interface, 192.168.0.1 and I would find out your ISP DNS IP's, you can get them from the router admin pages, and manually assign those on the PC's, rather than assign the router as the DNS info and have it forward DNS requests.