static ip?

[disturbed_1]

BitComet Version .70

Windows XP Home Edition

Siemens Speedstream 4200

My download speeds were bad so, after looking through some other posts, I tried portforward.com.

I followed the instructions to set up a static IP, but then it asked me for the actual static ip address, where can i find the number of the static ip that i set up?

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this.

[HptmAkira]

From what I understood and did was that the static ip they ask for is the "IP address" you take down from the command menu (where you ipconfig /all)

Edited December 7, 2006 by Dark_Shroud (see edit history)

[disturbed_1]

thanks for the help, but now iv run into a new problem

it tells me to enter the IP of my router into the address bar, and i tried using the one that i used to set up my static ip but it didnt work.

where can i find the ip address of my router?

[HptmAkira]

where can i find the ip address of my router?

default ip is usually 192.168.0.1

(what i've read)

Edited December 7, 2006 by Dark_Shroud (see edit history)

[kluelos]

When you add a router, the router takes the place of your computer in connecting to the modem.

That means that the router has to do all the things that your computer did or would do, in its place. If you didn't have a router, you'd have to set up your network connection the way the ISP told you to or it wouldn't work. They'd have told you that you would be assigned a dynamic IP, and they may have mentioned that this would happen via DHCP. (Just a protocol for assigning addresses, no big deal.)

With your router in place, IT gets the dynamic IP that your ISP assigns. That will be "your IP" as far as the rest of the world is concerned. They don't see your computer anymore, they just see the router and can't know what's behind it. All of that, the internet, the modem, the part of the router that gets the dynamic IP and talks to the internet for you, is the WAN.

The rest of it, the part of the router that talks to your computer, your computer itself, and any other computers you might have that you plug into the router too, is the LAN. So there are two sides here, WAN and LAN.

Your concern is solely with the LAN side.

From the LAN side -- that is, from a computer connected to one of the LAN ports of the router by wire or wirelessly, the router has an IP address which is valid only within the LAN. Nobody who's not on the LAN can connect to the router at that IP.

The router needs to be configured, and in order to do that, it has a little web server built into its firmware. You get to that web server by entering the router's LAN IP into your browser. The default IP is set by the manufacturer. Some routers allow it to be changed, some don't. You should look at your router's manual to learn what its default IP is. It should still be set to that, and if you get its login page, you'll know that it worked.

If the IP was changed, and you don't know what it is now, then you need to reset the router to its factory defaults. Your manual will tell you how to do this. It's a pretty good idea to get familiar with that manual.

If you reset the router, that means that any changes you made have disappeared. So if you had to configure the WAN side in order to connect to your ISP, you will have to make those changes again.

When you got your computer, it was preconfigured to use a dynamic IP, so that you could hook it to a modem, get an IP from some ISP, and it would work. But now you're not connecting your computer to a modem, you're connecting it to the LAN side of a router.

The router can, also, assign your computer a dynamic IP. It will do that by default. Since it will assign an IP, and your computer will ask for one, they work together and communicate. That's what you're doing now.

When you go into the router configuration, and want to forward a port (or as it is sometimes called, set up a virtual server), you will be asked for the port number, and you will also be asked for an IP address to forward it to. This is a security measure. The router won't forward a port to just any computer that happens to be connected to it, because that computer has to know that there will be incoming traffic on that port and be ready to handle that traffic. If the computer isn't expecting that traffic, it creates a vulerability that can be exploited by malware.

So the router demands a specific IP address, and if this is going to work, your computer has to be at that IP. If it isn't, then the incoming traffic either goes to some unsuspecting computer that IS at that address, or the traffic just gets dropped. Either way, it won't work.

This is a LAN, which is also called a private subnet. There are some IP address ranges that are reserved for private subnets, and those addresses can't be used on the internet in general. They're invalid and routers won't route them on the internet.

There are two ranges, or blocks, that are generally used for subnets. One of them is 192.168.xxx.xxx, and is the one your router probably uses by default. Your router's LAN IP is at one of these addresses within that block already. So that address is already taken, and you can't have two devices on a network with the same IP address. There are still a lot of other addresses available.

Some of them will be in the router's DHCP "pool", which is the range of addresses that it will use to assign to any device that connects to one of its LAN ports and asks for an address assignment. So here's how it could look:

192.168.1.1 - This is the router's LAN IP, and can be used only to talk to the router's firmware

192.168.1.2 - This is the start address of the router's DHCP pool

192.168.1.255 - This is the end address of the router's DHCP pool. So the router can assign all the addresses between 2 and 255, inclusive, to other devices that ask for an address.

254 - Some routers don't have an end address, they have a RANGE instead, which just means how many sequential addresses above the start address are to be in the pool. This means the same thing as the end address did, and that addresses between 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.255 are part of the pool.

You can change the end address, or the range (whichever yours has), to take addresses out of the pool. So change the END address to 192.168.1.4 (or change the RANGE to 3).

Now the DHCP pool just includes the addresses between 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.4 inclusive. Those IP's will be assigned to any devices that connect and request an IP.

All those others, that used to be in the pool, can still be used. But the router won't assign them as dynamic addresses, so they can be used as static IP's by any device that connects to the router. So let's pick one. Let's pick 192.168.1.7

Why 7? Why not? Could be anything between 5 and 255, but we had to choose just one. Use another if you like, it doesn't matter. We'll make that your computer's static IP. So go into your computer's network configuration, select the network connection you're using (if there's even more than one present), click on its Properties, find the Internet (TCP/IP) protocol and click on its properties.

Select "Use the following IP address", then in "IP address" enter your chosen one: 192.168.1.7

In the Subnet Mask enter 255.255.255.0 (if it's not already there). In the "Default Gateway" enter your router's LAN IP, which in this example was 192.168.1.1

Use the router's IP also for your preferred DNS server, and leave the alternate blank. Now click "OK" and get out of Network Connections. That's all there is to it, you now have set a static IP for your computer.

Log in to the router again, and go back to the port-forwarding or virtual server dialogue. You now know which IP you want the port forwarded for, namely your computer's address, 192.168.1.7

If it asks you for a LOCAL port number, that means that the router can translate between the incoming port number and a different port on your computer. You don't want to do that, so tell it to use the same port for both (which is your BitComet listen port). If it asks you for protocol, you want both TCP and UDP, so choose that. (It might be called BOTH or ANY). If you have to choose one or the other, then choose TCP, and immediately make another entry just like the first one, but this time for UDP.

And that's it, you've got your listen port forwarded to your computer's static IP, and that IP won't change on you.