Two days ago, my home network became a notwork. No connectivity to the world, but internal connections were OK - the media server and printer were unaffected. Power-cycling the DSL bridge and router (Linksys WRT54G) didn’t help, so I looked at the router’s config page and found it had no IP. Not 127.0.0.1, not 192.168.1.0 - it was 0.0.0.0
To make a long story short, I was able to regain service by setting the router for static IP, even though my ISP recommends DHCP as their IPs are “semi-static,” meaning it is billed as dynamic, but they don’t normally change IPs unless you move or change phone numbers. This is in comparison to their static IP service, where you pay $25 a month more for a guaranteed static IP. In other words, leaving the router set for static IP will probably work indefinitely, but there’s no promises.
The puzzle is why I couldn’t get it to work with DHCP. Is this a failure in the router to obtain an IP, or a failure in the DSL bridge to provide an IP?