Updated by Gavin Phillips on 04/15/2017
In home networks, IP addresses aren’t usually fixed, but they do fall within specific ranges. Your router will assign a new IP address automatically if another computer joins the network, or if your configuration changes. For the most part, this works out just fine — you shouldn’t notice a difference to your Internet performance or application functionality if your IP changes.
A static IP address however , is one that doesn’t change. Your computer decides upon the address it wants, and it tells the router. Why would you want to set up something like this? What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? Is there a better solution?
What Is A Static IP?
When we talk about IP addresses of home computers, we are usually referring to two types of address. One is your external IP address – the one that the world sees as your Internet connection. Then you have your private IP addresses internally on your home network. Even if you only have one computer on your home network, it will have a private IP given to it by the router. Private IP addresses cannot be routed over the Internet and are strictly for private use. There are a few possible ranges of private IP address, but for most home users this will be 192.168. *. * (where * can be anything).
Your router interface, for instance, is likely accessible through 192.168.0.1 — this is a private address. Your home computers might then be anything from 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0.254. Most routers will just assign internal addresses on a first come first served basis. The first computer you plug into the router will send out a network request saying “I need an IP address, my hardware address is x.x.x.x.x.x” and will be assigned 192.168.0.2, then the next will get 192.168.0.3.
Your external IP address is not something you can change — it is given to you automatically by your Internet provider. You can purchase a static external IP address, but they are incredibly expensive. If you do need to access your home network from a remote location, consider getting a dynamic address that will update itself when your IP changes. For a home network though , you are free to assign static, non-changing IP addresses to whatever computers you want. Let’s a take a look at when you would do this.
Why Would I Need A Static Private IP Address & What Are The Advantages?
Essentially, you need a static IP anytime you are trying to forward certain packets from the Internet to certain computers or devices on your home network. For example:
A Local Web Server
In order to set up a web server on your home network that is accessible by anyone in the world, you need to forward incoming requests on port 80 to your web server machine. If the web server was to restart and get a new IP from the router, the special rule that you created to forward requests on port 80 to the old server IP address wouldn’t work anymore, and your server would break.
