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Static IP vs. Dynamic IP causing problems

T

TheJTrain

Senior member
My home network has been set up with Static IPs for as long as I can remember, with the router's DHCP server disabled. This has never caused any sort of problem. Until now.

For the last year-plus I've been playing Battlefield 2142 online with buddies, never any problem connecting to the master server (provided by GameSpy.com, a subsidiary of IGN - this is important later) or to their statistics websites (so I can see how much I need to improve to match my buddies) (also hosted by the IGN network, though it's an EA.com domain). Until now.

All of a sudden, sometime in the past 6 weeks, I can no longer connect to any in-game server (anything hosted by GameSpy, like Battlefield, or GRAW 2), nor any GameSpy.com or IGN websites, including the statistics website at battlefield.ea.com/battlefield/bf2142 (though www.ea.com itself is just fine, not being hosted by the IGN network). Troubleshooting frustration ensues - the short version follows.

- Taking the router out of the network solves the problem
- Putting my game PC in the router's DMZ does not solve the problem
- Changing the subnet of the router & PC to Linksys's default 192.168.1.1 does not solve the problem
- Enabling the router's DHCP server & switching the PC to "automatically obtain IP" (Dynamic) solves the problem

Weird, huh? It's very repeatable - after all the troubleshooting, I returned my router to all the settings that it's had for the past year or two, and the problem exists. Make one change to the router (enable DHCP) & one change to the PC (Dynamic IP) and the problem goes away. Immediately. Undo those two changes, and the problem is back. Immediately.

So, it's not that big a deal, I'll just put the PC to Dynamic when I feel like playing online, and put it back to Static when I'm done. But I'm really curious now, and have come to the Networking gurus here for enlightenment.

(1) How in the world can those external networks/servers that I'm connecting to detect whether my PC is Static IP or Dynamic IP (shouldn't all they be able to see from an IP perspective is the IP of my router, as assigned by my cable ISP?)?
(2) Why in the world would they care, and disable connections to PCs that are not Dynamic IP?
(3) Why in the world would this change now?
(4) Is there a setting I can make in my router or PC that will allow me to keep my Static IPs and still connect to their servers?

Quench my curiosity!
Thanks,
Jason
 
Could it be that the DNS servers you have set in the static IP address scheme are not the ones used when you use DHCP.

I have a cable internet service from Virginmedia in the UK, and I noticed that the DNS server given out by the cable modem does change. I had all my IPs set statically. This did cause a few connection problems. I changed to using dynamic but used reservations on my router (netgear WGT624). In this way the PCs all get the same IP address, but the DNS server information is updated by DHCP. The router passes on the DNS address it got from the cable modem to the PCs via DHCP.

 
Thanks robmurphy - there could very well be an element of that in the situation, but not exactly as you describe. The DNS server that I set on the PC when in Static IP is just the internal IP of the router itself - 192.168.x.y (which, of course, has its own Dynamic IP on the WAN assigned from the ISP). When in Dynamic IP of course, the DNS is set to "automatically determine". I've never looked at any DNS settings in the Router itself, but maybe I'll find a clue there by watching what happens with those. Thanks!
 
I used to have the router's IP address as the DNS server address, and that's when I had the odd problem. I'd noticed that the DNS given by the ISP's cable modem was not the always the same, so I started using reservations.

Rob.
 
Thanks again robmurphy - I'll have to dig into my Linksys docs to see if it can do reservations like your Netgear does (not to mention visiting my friend Google to learn about reservations to begin with!).
 
Well, I didn't really figure out what reservations really were (I didn't look very hard though), but what I did do was set my PC back to Static IP, with the router's internal IP as the Default Gateway, but the ISP-provided DNS servers as the DNS entries, and it appears to work like a charm! I'll have to try and remember to look there first if everything falls apart if/when my ISP changes DNS servers on me.

Thanks all!

EDIT: for clarity
 
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