You’re fine so far.
When you install a router, you create a private subnet. There are two address blocks that are reserved for private subnets. There’s a Class B block at 10.xxx.xxx.xxx and a Class C block at 192.168.x.x So your router will use one or the other of them by default.
Using the Class B is mostly just high hopes. VERY few people actually need multiple thousands of IP addresses on their home networks, but never mind.
Don’t worry about your external IP, since you can’t control it anyway. You only need to worry about this side of the router, the LAN side. Say that the router’s IP address within the LAN is 10.10.0.1. That’s the one you use to configure it. Then the router has a DHCP pool, which is all of the other addresses it controls and will, upon request, assign to a computer connected to it that asks for one. You almost certainly don’t need more than a few, if any, assignable addresses. These would be for other computers in your house, or for visitors’ laptops.
The pool defaults (usually) to very large. You can cut it way down. It’s set either by start and end IP, or by start IP and range. All the rest will be static IP’s, and you can use any of them. So:
10.10.0.0 - Available but not used because addresses ending with a 0 make people nervous
10.10.0.1 - The router’s LAN IP address
10.10.0.2- DHCP pool start address - First dynamic address it will assign if asked to
10.10.0.4- DHCP pool end address- gives us three dynamic IP’s (2, 3 & 4) available if ever needed
10.10.0.7 Your computer’s static IP. (Why 7? Why not? You could use 42 if you want. You had it at 10, no prob. Anything from 5 to 255 is cool.)
You don’t need to tell your router what your computer’s IP is. Just set up the DHCP pool this way. Then configure your computer’s network connection to use that static IP. Use the router’s LAN IP (10.10.0.1 in this example) for both the default gateway and default DNS server. Your netmask (assuming you don’t really NEED that Class B) is 255.255.255.0
You should be communicating with the internet no problem at this point. Now go into your router’s port-forwarding section (sometimes called a virtual server). You’ll tell it you want your BitComet listen port opened, but it will require you to specify the IP address you want it opened for. (It’s a security thing, don’t want ports opened unless specific machines are expecting traffic on that port and are ready to handle it.) This is where you tell it you want that port opened for the static IP you gave your computer, and you want the port number to be the same. (The router can map incoming port X to local port Y, but you don’t want to do that.)
Open (LISTEN PORT) and send it to (MY COMPUTER’s LAN IP) on the same port number. Open it for both TCP and UDP traffic, btw.
So: the IPCONFIG command tells you what your computer’s LAN IP is, but that’s not the IP that everyone sees from the internet. Because you’re going through a router, what the world sees is the router’s IP: it’s WAN IP, which is different from it’s LAN side IP. The WAN IP is probably assigned by your ISP via DHCP and you have no control over it.
The WHATSMYIP site, as well as the rest of the internet, only sees your router and doesn’t know (or care) what’s connected to its LAN side. That happens to be your computer but it could be a roomful of unix boxes and IBM mainframes. or one old Apple IIc, for all the difference it makes. (Except that I want to know how you rigged up an ethernet port for a IIc, but nevermind.)
This takes care of things on your end, but only there. You said you had a wireless internet connection. That could make a huge difference, because a lot of those are also done via router with firewall that blocks ports, etc. But you may not have that issue, and I suspect you will not, because of your external IP address.
Recall we talked about reserved blocks for private subnets? Your ISP doesn’t have you in one of those blocks, so you’re probably not in a private subnet, and so probably not behind an ISP router blocking you with a firewall.
