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Fairly new to networking concepts, have read the thread DHCP Reservation vs Static IP address, and still have a "dumb" question that wasn't asked there:

I have two devices I'd like to "freeze" an IP for. By freeze, I mean either static IP through Windows Networking, DHCP reservation on the router, or both. The first device is my Windows 10 laptop, the second a wifi printer.

I'd like the laptop's IP to be frozen, because part of what I use it for is Kodi streaming using Chromecast. I really don't want to change the IP address on my android's Kodi remote control app every time the DHCP server hands out a new lease. So, static, DHCP, or both?

For the printer, I just want to be rid of the constant dynamic IP re-connection headaches. it I would think just a DHCP reservation should be fine (?). And in any case, I don't believe I can set more than one static IP on the Windows side, right?

Last silly question, do I need to worry about Windows Firewall, opening ports there and what have you?

Appreciate any guidance out there. Would like it even more if you could include the "why" part of whatever answers you may have. Thanks much!

clg
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The windows firewall should be fine to open up if you have a good router which will handle incoming traffic. Mainly file sharing is the vulnerability in Windows systems from an internal device inside your LAN. So as long as you have that OFF and make backups you should be pretty safe. you are much more likely to be at data loss risk from some website with the recent Javascript variability in the intel systems.

Just to be clear DHCP reservation is IP assignment though a device name. Static is simply stating I want to reference it by IP instead of name. So as long as a device can reference another device by name, you should always use name vs static ip.

However ... Having said that, i have had issues with name resolution on some routers. ie the device registers its name, the router assigns and IP to the name and shows in there routers DHCP client list .. and yet you are not able to ping the device by name. You maybe able to ping linux servers but not windows machines.

If this is the headache you refer to then I see. There is actually a way around this by adding a . to the end of the device name (ie "titan." instead of "titan") and you can actually sort it out by having windows add the . to every machine you ping resolving the issue.

very few reasons why you need to use a static ip but if you want to why not.

some reasons you want to use static IP

  1. you may want to modify the routing table on a windows machine with the route command to control traffic.
  2. you may want to setup a subnet on your subnet (a router behind a router) to service 2 DHCP subnet ranges.
  3. you cant figure out why a device will not register its name correctly for example a nest thermostat

You asked about setting more than one static ip on windows side. If you have 2 cards (or ethernet connections) you can set 2 physical IP addresses and then you can customize your routing table to direct traffic in different ways. Also you can setup virtual ip addresses with ethernet card or connection. But unless you have a virtual machine on your computer, I don't see how its necessary. Also If you only have 1 router on your LAN, and no virtual machines on your windows box, you probably only need 1 IP.

You can checkout VMWare Player if you do need 2 virtual ips on same box.

Peter Moore
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Making an IP reservation in your router's DHCP config ought to be sufficient for ensuring that your service-providing devices' IP addresses do not change unnecessarily.

As well, should you switch router vendors, ISPs, or network topologies at some future date, your devices will not become unreachable until manual IP address changes are made.

If you do manually configure a host on a DHCP network, it's advisable to either assign it out of a block of IP addresses that is not in the DHCP server's pool, or mark the IP addresses reserved so that another device does not get assigned one of those IP addresses by mistake.

Nevin Williams
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