I have too many devices plugged into my router so I need to get a switch. The only feature I need in a switch is the ability to reserve IPs for certain devices. E.g., every time computerX connects to the network, I want it’s IP to be 192.168.1.105 and not some random 192.168.1.X IP. Do I need a managed switch to reserve IPs or can my router continue to handle this after adding the switch?
If you want a specific device to always have the same IP address you should turn off DHCP and use manually assigned IP addresses.
Beyond that, an unmanaged switch plugged into your router will work just find to give you more ports.
ETA, if you don’t change any settings on your router, adding an unmanaged switch to your network will be just like adding more ports to your router.
What router are you using?
I had a similar situation. Our 4-port router connects to a switch, which then connects to another switch (in the basement), which in turn connects to yet another switch (in the parlour).
On my Linksys 310N, I went to Basic Setup then clicked the DHCP Reservation button. From the screen that comes up, I assigned machines IP addresses via their MAC address.
Everything has been copacetic. I asked a related question (can’t find the thread) about the impact of adding switch after switch on my network, and the general consensus was it was fine. I don’t know if I threw all that advice away by assigning IP addresses, but we haven’t noticed anything (run a business out of the office here, and lots of Netflix/Hulu/Rhapsody on the other systems).
I have a Netgear WNR3500L. Under DHCP it also has an address reservation section where you can have it force devices to use certain addresses, so I’ve left DHCP on and, once a new device is connected, gone there to reserve an IP for it.
This is my first time buying a switch and just wondered if I’m ok with an unmanaged switch (which means that it has no configuration options) or whether it will take over IP assignment for the devices attached to it and I’ll have no way to change them. The router still trumps the switch, right?
Yup, an unmanaged switch can’t really do anything at all. Like I said, it’s really just going to add more ports to your router. Keep in mind that you will lose one router port and one switch port to connect them together. So if you have a 4 port router and a 4 port switch you’ll have a total of 6 ports, not 7 or 8.
Also, if you have devices scattered around your house, this is a good time to put the port somewhere else in the house. For example, I recently redid my entertainment center and found that I needed an internet connection for my 1)Tivo 2)receiver 3)DVD Player and 4)TV. Instead of running 4 wires back to my basement where the router was, I put a switch in the entertainment center, connected them all to that and ran one wire to the router in the basement. Much easier that way. Especially since I already had the wire there from the TiVo.
Routers also have something called a DHCP range. This is the range of addresses DHCP is allowed to use. You cannot manually assign addresses within the DCHP range. So if your router has a DHCP range of 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.199 then that router can assign 199 addresses on demand as needed. If you needed a device to always be at a certain IP address, you would specify a static IP (usually on the device) of 192.168.1.200 - 192.168.1.254. That way whenever the device connects to the network, it will ask for that address to be assigned to it. Much simpler long haul to just have a standard DHCP range for most small networks rather than having to reconfigure the router manually for every single device in the event a router needs to be replaced.
Yes, yes it would be. Also, I see something called address assignment. I’ll have to look into that as well which seems even better. I prefer my standard devices to have manually assigned IPs. But the problem is, when I turn off DHCP, it’s a royal pain to bring some new device onto the network. Especially if it’s temporary.
Another problem this creates is for things like a phone or laptop that I might connect to other networks which then means I have to remove my network settings and put them back in when I get home. It seems like using the router to assign an IP based on MAC address would make the most sense. The same device would always have the same IP, but new devices would still attach in the typical DHCP sense and my personal devices could attach to other DHCP networks with no problems.
I might have to play around with this some day.
Excellent, thanks. I’m reconfiguring the whole network and making a cabinet to hang in the laundry room to move devices to and more than one switch may be necessary. The hard part is that I have a cobweb of scripts (that I’m also cleaning up) to allow communication between every single device I have. Crap, I may end up moving to a cabin and writing a manifesto against all this.
Interesting. On our Linksys interface, under DHCP server setting, it has a configurable maximum number of users, then below that it has IP Address Range (“192.168.1.100 to 149”).
Under DHCP Reservation, it has DHCP Reservation: Select Clients from DHCP Tables. There it lists what’s connected. There are select boxes and add buttons in this table.
Under that, it has Clients Already Reserved, with a table of Client name, Assign IP address, To this MAC address.
Between the two, it has a section to Manually Add a Client, with the Client Name and the last IP block (i.e. “192.168.1.__”) free and a blank MAC address block. That’s how I set most of the machines on the system to static IPs. Some had internal configuration options (e.g. the Synology NAS device), but I assigned them at the router as well.
Did Linksys take care of avoiding assigning addresses within the reserved range or do they do things differently?
What you’re describing is not the function of a switch but a DHCP server with a reservation. That’s usually handled by your internet router. Switches direct traffic from Port A to Port B, nothing more. A hub, OTOH will direct traffic from one port to all other ports. You want a switch, not a hub.
With managed switches, you get into the realm of VLANs, bandwidth monitoring, QoS, and more. Far more than the home environment usually needs.
The DHCP Reservation settings on your Linksys are just telling the DHCP server to hand out the IP addresses listed there when a client asks for a DHCP lease. When you manually configure a device with an address in that DHCP Reservation list, the client still uses DHCP to acquire its address, but the DHCP server is being told to only offer that specific IP address to a DHCP client that matches the MAC address listed in the table.
Long story short, you aren’t technically using static IP addresses, you’re still using DHCP, but you’re guaranteeing that the clients always get the same DHCP assigned IP address.