How can I keep the forwarded ports though my router going to the same computer?

Question

I have a home network. The router has port forwarding, which you set by setting which IP address the ports are forwarded to. But as the computers come and go and are restarted, the router keeps assigning them different addresses, leading to the ports forwarding to different machines all the time, which I'm constantly manually correcting. I've tried setting up the computers with manual IP settings, or using DHCP with a manual IP address, but neither one will work- they only work when configured to use DHCP, and then the addresses keep changing. An old router I had let you reserve an IP address and always assign it to the same MAC address, so the same machine always had a static local IP, but my Linksys Wireless router doesn't appear to offer that. Any idea?

Answer 1

Depending on what model Linksys router you have, you can flash it to use a third-party firmware that opens up more options including assigning a static IP to a MAC address (so your computer will always have the same IP).

I don't believe there's a way you can do this with the default Linksys firmware. Again what you want is assigning an IP to a MAC Address which is in the DHCP server settings.

Answer 2

yes the best Idea is to go to each of the computers and setup a static IP address like this

start ... run
type in : cmd
at the promter type : ipconfig /all
write down all the information that is given in that window

now
start ... settings ... control panel
right-click on network connections and select open
right-click on local area connection and select properties
In General Tab
scroll down until you see Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and select it
click on Properties button below

a window pops out , In General Tab select use the following IP address
you must type an IP address
( I have a LinkSys also and given the gateway, or the router internal address is 192.168.1.1 I have put my IP as being 192.168.1.130)
Now from the paper you wrote down the data
type in the subnet mask ( in my case was 255.255.255.0)
type in the default gateway (in my case was 192.168.1.1 )

For the DNS server addresses select advanced
in DNS tab
DNS server addresses in order of use ..click add and add the result that you wrote down on the paper previously
click ok ok and then restart the computer
everything above works with DHCP

note . you have to do with the other computers the same thing otherwise you might have conflicts in establishing the IP

if you have problems let me know, email me

good luck